EVERETT — At 19, Nicholas Brunson has his first strike.
He also is facing up to 15½ years in prison for a violent home invasion robbery that left a disabled man seriously injured. Brunson on Wednesday pleaded guilty to first-degree assault and attempted first-degree robbery in connection wi
th the March 10 attack.
He is scheduled to be sentenced in front of Superior Court Judge Joseph Wilson next month.
Brunson admitted to police that he’d been planning a robbery for weeks after seeing a laptop in his 56-year-old neighbor’s Lynnwood apartment. He also told police that he chose the man because he was “weak and feeble,” according to court documents.
The victim has cerebral palsy. He was clobbered repeatedly with a hammer, stabbed and shocked with an electronic stun gun. The attack left him with a broken clavicle and punctured lung.
Brunson, then 18, and two other young men, Joseph Ricks and Trevor Jones, pushed their way into the man’s apartment.
Brunson was armed with a hammer. He allegedly told police he was trying to knock the man out. He later admitted that he thought about going back to kill the man, according to detectives. Police found the bloody hammer in the injured man’s apartment.
Prosecutors suspect that Ricks used the stun gun and Jones stabbed the man with a switchblade.
The trio fled, went back to Brunson’s place, changed clothes and headed to a rave, court papers said.
Brunson was the last of the three to plead guilty.
He said very little during Wednesday’s hearing in front of Superior Court Judge Kenneth Cowsert. He told the judge he’d finished the eleventh grade and understood the plea paperwork. Cowsert told Brunson he was pleading guilty to a “most serious offense,” giving him a strike under the state’s persistent offender law.
“You get three strikes and you’re out,” Cowsert said.
Ricks, 20, was sentenced last week to a bit more than 14 years in prison. Jones is scheduled to be sentenced next month.
Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463; hefley@heraldnet.com.
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