EVERETT — A Mukilteo man accused of attacking his mother with a baseball bat last year has been sent to supportive housing instead of prison so he can receive treatment for his severe mental illness.
Snohomish County Superior Court Judge George Appel concluded earlier this week that the man was in a mental health crisis when he clobbered his mother with a Louisville Slugger aluminum bat.
His mental state likely impaired his ability to appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions or to follow the law, the judge ruled.
Appel agreed to sentence Eric Bond to a year in jail, time the man had already served. It was a sentence below the minimum set by the state Sentencing Guidelines Commission.
Bond, 36, was released from jail and transported to Compass Health housing in Seattle. He will be under the supervision of the state Department of Corrections for 18 months. He isn’t allowed to have contact with his mother for a decade, except by phone. Bond is required to take his medications.
He was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder years ago. Bond had stopped taking his medication but took a dose the day before the Aug. 27, 2016, attack, court papers said.
He said he’d been hearing voices, urging him to take his own life. He explained to police that the voices were coming from his mother, according to court papers. He attacked her as she was sitting in the family’s living room.
Police responding to the 911 call found Bond’s mother locked inside her vehicle parked in the driveway. Her hands were bloody and officers saw an open head wound. She told police her wrist, hanging at a strange angle, was broken.
“When asked if he was trying to kill (his mother), the defendant responded that he was actually trying to help her while he was still hitting her, but he wanted the voices to stop first,” according to court papers.
Bond initially was charged with first-degree assault with a deadly weapon. If he’d been convicted of that charge, he was facing more than a decade in prison.
Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Rachel Cormier Anderson reduced the charge to second-degree assault. Bond’s attorney Fred Moll, a public defender, could have pursued a diminished capacity defense that could have left Bond without any community supervision.
A social worker assigned to the Snohomish County Public Defender Association helped arrange Bond’s housing.
Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463; hefley@heraldnet.com.
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