Contact: Jody Mullis, Andrew McCormack
Assistant United States Attorneys
Tel: (207) 945-0373
Bangor, Maine: United States Attorney Thomas E. Delahanty II announced that Jeffrey Barnard, 53, of Ellsworth, Maine, was sentenced yesterday in U.S. District Court by Judge John A. Woodcock, Jr. to 78 months in prison and three years of supervised release for being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition. The defendant pleaded guilty to the charge on June 7, 2016.
According to court records, on May 31, 2014, Barnard barricaded himself in his camper with a .22-caliber semi-automatic rifle and ammunition beginning a 14-hour stand-off with police. During the stand-off, Barnard fired the weapon and proclaimed that “this is war.” Near the end of the standoff, Barnard emerged from his camper holding his rifle. Despite commands to put the rifle down, Barnard raised and pointed the rifle in the direction of the police officers. Barnard was prohibited from possessing the firearm and ammunition because he had been previously convicted of state felony offenses in California and Maine and of being a felon in possession of a firearm in U.S. District Court in Maine.
In imposing the sentence, Judge Woodcock said that “short of an actual injury or death from use of a firearm, this type of possession is the most serious and egregious imaginable.”
The investigation was conducted by the Maine State Police; the Ellsworth and Bangor Police Departments; the Maine Attorney General’s Office; the Maine State Police Crime Laboratory; and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.