Man who assaulted Grant Co. Courthouse security guard sentenced to year in prison
EPHRATA WA July 4 2019 – A man who assaulted a security guard at the Grant County Courthouse has been sentenced to a year in prison.
Joshua Maher, 34, pleaded guilty to assault in the third degree. He also pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver in a separate case that was combined with the assault case as part of a plea agreement. Maher was initially charged with second-degree assault, two counts of possession of a controlled substance with intent to manufacture or deliver and three counts of possession of a controlled substance in the two cases. The charges were amended as part of the plea deal.
Maher was sentenced to 12 months and one day in prison, followed by eight months in a residential, chemical-dependency treatment program, according to court records.
On May 7, Maher entered the Grant County Sheriff’s Office lobby at the courthouse and was in the process of going through the security checkpoint to attend a hearing for the narcotics case.
Maher, who was with his 15-year-old son, had removed his belt, wallet, cellphone and keys at the checkpoint when a female security guard noticed a bulge in his front pocket, according to court records.
The security guard asked Maher to remove the item but he refused. The guard reached to pat Maher’s pocket when he grabbed the guard’s wrist.
“I instructed him to get his hands off me and raise them up as to ascertain the object bulging from his pocket,” the guard wrote in a statement to police. “Upon reaching for it and grabbing the object which appeared to be based on my experience and training to be black tar heroin with in baggie, Mr. Maher pulled away and grabbed me with both hands, shoving me violently into the interior side of the entry doors of the Law and Justice building.”
The guard immediately fell to the ground, suffering a broken finger and kneecap and a pulled tendon, according to Ephrata police. The guard was taken to Samaritan Hospital in Moses Lake for treatment.
Maher fled the courthouse and was arrested the next day.
In the narcotics case, Maher was arrested March 5 after a traffic stop for a narcotics search warrant. Deputies located close to two grams of both heroin and methamphetamine in the car, and 15 suboxone strips at his home. Maher told detectives he had been selling meth and heroin the past two years to support himself as he did not have a job, according to court records.
