A Somers man was sentenced in Flathead County District Court Thursday for his role in last summer’s road rage assault on the Fourth of July in Ferndale.
Gaige Christopher Mower, 21, was given a six-month suspended sentence, a $500 fine and ordered to do 50 hours of community service for beating Antonio Valencia in the Ferndale Market parking lot on July 4, 2013. Mower will also have to pay $2,000 in restitution.
Mower was one of three men who followed Valencia in a green Subaru last Independence Day and then beat him in front of a small group of people. Valencia told investigators that the Subaru had been tailgating him, and that he pulled into the parking lot at the Ferndale Market in an attempt to get away from them. Mower was found guilty of misdemeanor assault at a jury trial earlier this year. He was initially charged with felony aggravated assault, but was later acquitted of that charge.
“I’m not proud of what I did, but it happened,” Mower said during his sentencing hearing before District Judge Ted O. Lympus. “I did what I did.”
Prosecutors initially asked for a six-month sentence with all but 60 days suspended. However, Mower and his attorney, Sean Hinchey, asked for a lesser sentence because the defendant recently got a job in North Dakota and needed it to pay restitution. Mower will do 50 hours of community service during breaks from his job in North Dakota.
Ryan Horn, one of the other two men charged in the July 4 beating, was given a six-month suspended sentence in January after pleading guilty to misdemeanor assault. Andrew Taylor Nelson, the third assailant who beat Valencia with a golf club until it broke, pleaded guilty to felony assault with a weapon earlier this year and will be sentenced later this month.