The man who was shot on Chadwick Street on Monday a few steps from Maine Medical Center would have not survived had he been further away from the hospital, the victim’s mother said.

The wounded man was identified as Samuel Iserbyt, 48, said his mother, Charlotte Iserbyt, 85, of Dresden.

She said her son is recovering from surgery in the intensive care unit and has spoken with detectives. She declined to identify the man who shot him.

“Oh yes, it could have been terribly serious,” Iserbyt said. “He’s just very lucky he was alive. He was in the Marines, and he’s been in action in the wars. He managed to stay alive in the war, and then something like that happens.”

Iserbyt was severely wounded in the shooting and was bleeding profusely from the gunshot wound, his mother said. She credited the swift work of paramedics and doctors for saving his life, and said he is recovering in the intensive care unit at Maine Medical Center in Portland on Tuesday, but did not specify where her son was wounded, who shot him or why he was fired upon.

“It was just a ridiculous situation,” Iserbyt said of the altercation that preceded the shooting. “I do know my son is alive, thank God, he’s a pretty rugged kid. It takes a lot to get him down.”

Iserbyt, 48, has lived alone on Chadwick Street for about five years, she said, and is a former Marine who served during Desert Storm in 1991.

Police had taken another man into custody on Tuesday night, but have since released him without charging him, said Portland Police Lieutenant James Sweatt. He declined to comment on that man’s involvement in the shooting.

Police first received a report on Monday at about 8:30 p.m. of a disturbance and a shot fired at a residence at 146 Chadwick St.

“Both parties knew each other,” Sweatt said, though he declined to comment on how they were acquainted.

Police are asking anyone with information about the shooting to contact the detectives.

“They may not realize what they saw is important,” Sweatt said. “If they witnessed this, we do want them to give us a call.”

Sweatt said detectives were also waiting to further examine inside the apartment building where the shooting took place to look for evidence. He said police were still unsure at this point how the shooting occurred and where exactly it happened.

The building where the shooting occurred stands between a bed and breakfast and a sober-living home. Across the street is a busy parking lot that serves the hospital.

Albert Nicholas, 62, has lived across and a few doors down from the shooting site for the last seven years. In that time he cannot recall anything similar happening nearby, saying the West End is known to be safe.

Nicholas said he heard arguing and what sounded like a fire-cracker, never considering a gunshot.

“It’s one of the best neighborhoods in the city of Portland,” he said. “I wouldn’t expect it.”

Police are asking anyone with information about the shooting to contact the Portland Police at 874-8575.

A Rockland man who shot and injured an intruder in his home last year is appealing a judge’s ruling in May that the owners of the apartment complex where he lived did not violate his civil rights when he was told to give up the gun or face eviction.

An attorney for Harvey Lembo, 68, filed the appeal to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court on May 27. The attorney, Patrick Strawbridge of Boston, said the court erred in granting the property owners’ motion to dismiss Lembo’s civil case on the grounds that evicting a tenant did not support a cause of action under the Maine Civil Rights Act.

Justice William Stokes dismissed the case on May 9, saying Lembo’s claims failed to meet the basic standard that would give him grounds for the case to move forward.

Lembo, a retired and disabled lobsterman, shot Christopher Wildhaber after midnight Sept. 1. Lembo had bought the pistol less than 24 hours earlier after several break-ins at his apartment.

Lembo’s suit, filed in November 2015, claimed that his landlord’s threat to evict him through the courts violated his Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, and violated the Maine Civil Rights Act. Lembo, who uses a wheelchair, had argued that he needed the gun to protect himself after his home was burglarized multiple times in recent years.

The case quickly became a flash point for gun-rights advocates, who point to Lembo’s actions as evidence that firearms are useful for lawful personal protection. The case also became the basis for a state law that goes into effect in July that places new limits on what landlords may regulate when it comes to firearm possession in their rental units.

Lembo’s legal team included Washington, D.C., attorneys David Thompson and Howard Nielson Jr., who have represented the National Rifle Association. They argued that threatening to take Lembo to court if he did not give up his gun equated to the use of physical force, a required element under the Maine law to prove a violation of someone’s civil rights.

A Portland man’s murder trial that had been scheduled to begin Tuesday has been postponed after lawyers in the case tried in vain late last week to seat a jury.

The trial of Abdirahman Haji-Hassan in the 2014 shooting death of 23-year-old Richard Lobor will be rescheduled to a date that lawyers will decide next week in a conference with the judge.

Prosecutors and Haji-Hassan’s lawyers struggled all day Friday at the Cumberland County Courthouse in Portland to find enough suitable jurors from a starting pool of about 125 potential people, but by early evening too many had already been disqualified to seat the requisite 12 people with extras as alternatives.

Some of the qualifying questions posed to jurors dealt with issues of race, immigration and religion. Lobor came to America with his family as Christian refugees from wartorn Sudan, an African nation that is predominantly Muslim. Haji-Hassan is a native of Somalia, also a predominantly Muslim nation in Africa.

Haji-Hassan, 25, is accused of shooting Lobor in an apartment at 214 Brighton Ave. on Nov. 21, 2014, when Lobor stepped between Haji-Hassan and another man to break up a dispute. Haji-Hassan shot Lobor once in the leg and once in the head, according to a Portland police affidavit filed with the court.

Witnesses who were in the apartment at the time of the shooting had been expected to be called to testify at the trial, which could take up to two weeks.

One witness, Michael Deblois, is the tenant in whose apartment the shooting took place. He is diagnosed as having paranoid schizophrenia and he had smoked crack cocaine before the dispute started. Justice Thomas Warren deemed Deblois mentally competent to testify after a pretrial hearing Thursday in which Deblois answered some questions by the attorneys while under oath.

Haji-Hassan’s lawyers had planned to portray another witness, Gang Deng Majok, as an alternative suspect. Majok was also in the apartment at the time of the shooting and has subsequently been charged with murder in a 2015 shooting inside a recording studio in Portland’s Old Port.

One of Haji-Hassan’s attorneys, Clifford Strike, said he had been prepared to make his opening statement for the trial on Tuesday and was disappointed by the delay.

“Not only is it frustrating for the defense, it is frustrating for our client because he has to wait more time for his day in court,” Strike said Tuesday morning.

Another of Haji-Hassan’s attorneys, Molly Butler Bailey, questioned Deblois during last week’s hearing about a statement he gave to police about the shooting in 2014 about a woman and “her little invisible friends.” He said the memory could have been from the night before the murder, or may have dated back to an episode in Colorado in 1992.

“No one’s talked about it, and I haven’t talked about it, but it hasn’t appeared to go away,” Deblois said, referring to the 1992 incident at which he suggested the murder was foretold. “I heard something about this. I would be involved in a shooting later on in life, and I didn’t know if I would live or die.”

Deblois said he could not recall whether he was taking his prescription medication for schizophrenia in 2014, but said he is taking it now.

Deblois knew the men in his apartment only by their nicknames, “Fresh,” “Dreads,” “New York” and “Jordan.” He allowed them to use his apartment in the Princeton Village complex for parties and gave them rides in exchange for drinks, food and crack cocaine, according to police. Police subsequently identified “Fresh” as Lobor, “Jordan” as Haji-Hassan, “Dreads” as 29-year-old Mohamed Ashkir and “New York” as Majok.

Majok, 31, of Portland, is charged with murder in the May 25, 2015, shooting death of 19-year-old Treyjon Arsenault and wounding of 21-year-old Mohamed Ali of Portland at Da Block Studios at 371 Fore St. in Portland. He and another defendant in that case, Johnny Ouch, 21, of Westbrook, are scheduled for trial starting Sept. 12.

Deblois told police on the night of Lobor’s killing that he entered the living room while Haji-Hassan and Ashkir were arguing in a foreign language and that Haji-Hassan pointed a silver-colored .357-caliber revolver at Ashkir, according to an affidavit by Portland police Detective Maryann Bailey.

” ‘Jordan’ was moving the revolver up and down and counting. He was telling ‘Dreads’ to leave the apartment,” Bailey wrote. “‘Fresh’ moved in between ‘Dreads’ and ‘Jordan’ to mediate the situation.”

Deblois said Thursday that he heard three shots, but saw only two of them. Police have said Deblois told them he saw Haji-Hassan fire one shot into the floor, another to Lobor’s leg, but that he did not see the fatal shot to Lobor’s head.

Police in Minnesota arrested Haji-Hassan in Minneapolis on Dec. 19, 2014, and he has been held since then. He has pleaded not guilty to a charge of willful and intentional murder, which is punishable by 25 years to life in prison.

Three police departments in southern York County announced Wednesday that they will launch Community Access to Recovery programs – adding to a growing list of public safety agencies that are treating drug addiction less like a crime and more like a disease.

The programs, which allow people suffering from substance abuse disorder to come into police stations to seek treatment without fear of being criminally charged, are modeled after an initiative created last year by Leonard Campanello, police chief in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

In creating their own programs, the police departments in Kittery, York and Eliot will have intake hours from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. from Monday through Friday. During intake, each person seeking treatment will be interviewed and then provide transportation to the nearest hospital, detox facility or recovery program that participates in the Community Access to Recovery program.

Once a patient arrives, they will meet with a recovery coach who will help them navigate different treatment options and support systems.

The police chiefs in Kittery, York and Eliot joined their counterparts in three New Hampshire towns, Dover, Portsmouth and Newmarket, at an event Wednesday in Portsmouth. Also represented were Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover, York Hospital, Portsmouth Regional Hospital, Frisbie Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New Hampshire and the Safe Harbor Recovery Center in Portsmouth.

After launching his Angel Initiative in Gloucester last year, Campanello teamed up with Massachusetts businessman John Rosenthal to create The Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative in an effort to encourage other police departments across the country to consider adopting a similar model.

Scarborough Police Department was among the first partners and its program, Operation Hope, has had success in placing dozens of people into treatment, although many have been sent out of state because Maine has a shortage of beds.

Other Maine agencies that have created programs include the sheriffs departments in Washington and Aroostook counties and the police departments in Paris, Ellsworth and Augusta.

In all, there are 133 police agencies across the country that have created their own programs.

Portland police are asking the public to help identify a man believed responsible for three similar assaults in the area of Congress Street between Neal and Weymouth streets.

The assaults occurred on April 20 and 30, and May 24, and in each case, a man grabbed a woman from behind.

In the first case, a woman reported to police that on April 20 she was walking on Congress Street when a man grabbed her buttocks. She sprayed him with pepper spray and he ran off. That assault was not reported until May 27.

Then on April 30 around 9 p.m., a 29-year-old homeless woman reported that a man assaulted her from behind in an alley at 169 Neal St. The assailant grabbed the woman’s neck, stole the money she had concealed in her bra and then fled.

In the May 24 case, a 30-year-old Portland woman said a man approached her from behind at about 11:30 p.m. near Weymouth and Congress streets, grabbed her around her neck and took her bra.

In each instance, the description of the assailant was similar – a white man about 30 years old, 5 feet 7 inches to 6 feet tall, with long blond hair, a heavyset, rugged frame, two or more lower lip piercings, and wearing a baseball cap and glasses.

“We have a pretty unique description involved here, which is part of the reason we want to get this out to the public,” said Assistant Police Chief Vern Malloch.

Investigators believe the man either lives nearby or frequents the area where the assaults took place, but despite stepping up patrols, they have not located a suspect.

Malloch urged women to be more aware of their surroundings while out at night, and to avoid walking alone for long periods if possible. Women should also keep a cellphone handy and be ready to call 911 if attacked.

“Be sure to know that you should run or fight or scream to defend yourself in these types of attacks,” Malloch said. “These are all very important things that may seem simple but it’s worth saying and we think it’s worth people being aware of.”

Anyone with information about the assaults or who knows someone matching the suspect’s description is asked to call Portland police at 874-8575.

To provide information anonymously:

• Mobile phone users can text the keyword “GOTCHA” plus their message to 274637 (CRIMES).

• Submit a tip by going to the Portland Police Department website and clicking “Submit an Anonymous Crime Tip.”

• Anonymous phone tips can be left on the department’s Crime Tip line at 874-8584.

Police and sheriff’s deputies peacefully resolved a five-hour standoff Thursday involving a father and son at a motel in Bridgton.

They arrested John A. Connolly, 53, and his son, John Siciliani, 30, who holed up in a room at the First and Last Motel on Portland Road, part of Route 302. Traffic was detoured off the busy road during the incident.

Siciliani was involved in an alleged assault Wednesday night. An arrest warrant cited two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon, and police went to the motel Thursday to arrest him after a resident reported that Siciliani was on the property.

A tactical team from the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office takes position at the First and Last Motel in Bridgton during Thursday’s standoff. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

Siciliani, who is known to Bridgton police, retreated into one of the rooms with his father.

The two refused to submit to arrest, communicating on and off with deputies first through the closed door and then through other means, said Bridgton Police Chief Rick Stillman.

“They didn’t think they had done anything wrong,” Stillman said.

At a nearby gas station, people record videos and watch as the situation unfolds at the First and Last Motel in Bridgton on Thursday. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

Connolly is married to Jo-Anne Connolly, who is listed in town property records as the motel’s owner.

For several hours Thursday, teams of sheriff’s deputies in tactical gear were positioned behind two armored vehicles, along with police cars from multiple towns that surrounded the motel. A tactical team from the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office entered the woods behind the building at one point.

Police would not say whether either man was armed.

An employee from Central Maine Power Co. who arrived just after 4:30 p.m., said police asked him to cut power to the motel.

The men gave themselves up minutes after the power was turned off on that stretch of Portland Road, which reopened around 5 p.m.

A tactical team from the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office waits outside the First and Last Motel in Bridgton during Thursday’s standoff. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

Police were still searching the scene at 5:30 p.m. and had not finalized possible charges for the father or son for their roles in the standoff.

Razel Gavin, 18, of Poland said he was visiting the motel Wednesday night when Siciliani began to argue with him as Gavin searched for a missing family dog behind the complex.

Gavin said that he knew the man only as “John Jr.,” and that he appeared intoxicated, unsteady on his feet and slurring his speech.

Siciliani called Gavin, who is black, racial slurs, Gavin said. The altercation became physical when Siciliani emerged from his apartment with a 2-by-4 and swung it at Gavin before retreating and returning with a rifle, Gavin said.

Gavin called police, and Siciliani apparently fled. Officers took a report, and told Gavin and his family to call police if Siciliani returned.

Steven Anderson, 31, said he lived at the motel for about a year until November, and has done property maintenance for the owners, including snowplowing in the winter.

Anderson said the father and son had frequent arguments, and at one point the parents had asked their son to leave, but allowed him back to live at the property.

“I’m really hoping they get out of this alive,” Anderson said during the standoff. “It’s more sad than anything else.”

Connolly has a criminal record in Maine dating to 1982, involving mostly misdemeanor charges of criminal mischief, theft and assault. He has one felony conviction, in October 1990, for tampering with a witness, for which he served one year in prison and one year probation.

It was not clear Thursday whether Siciliani has a criminal record in Maine.

Prosecutors have dropped a rape charge against Logan Taylor, the 22-year-old former Bowdoin College student who was accused of sexually assaulting a fellow student last spring, according to court documents.

Taylor, who was 21 when he was accused of raping the 20-year-old female student in his dorm room on May 24, 2015, has pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct through an Alford plea agreement in which he did not admit guilt but acknowledged that the evidence against him would likely lead to a conviction.

The plea agreement was finalized April 7, and was signed by Cumberland County Assistant District Attorney Michael Madigan. Messages to the District Attorney’s Office were not returned Wednesday.

Taylor was sentenced to five days in the Cumberland County Jail.

The female student declined to comment when reached by phone on Wednesday. The Portland Press Herald does not identify victims of sexual assault without their consent.

Court records do not explain why authorities dropped the felony charge, which carried a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison. Taylor’s attorney, Andrei Maciag argued in a court motion that the state should turn over a recorded version of the grand jury proceeding that resulted in Taylor’s indictment. It was the only recorded interview law enforcement conducted with the victim, and it was incomplete because the battery on the detective’s recording device ran out.

Maciag argued the unrecorded part of the interview contained evidence that would exculpate Taylor.

A judge denied the motion and instead requested that the detective who conducted the interview provide an explanation to account for the battery issue and to describe what was discussed after the recording stopped.

In a subsequent affidavit, the detective swore that there was no substantive information discussed about the assault after his recorder died, and he used that time to photograph text messages on the woman’s phone.

Messages for Maciag and the Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office were not returned Wednesday, and Madigan, who prosecuted the case, has since left for another job, the office said.

The alleged rape was first reported about 2:35 a.m. May 24, 2015, after the victim called campus security for a ride home. She said she’d been with Taylor, he had walked off and she was concerned about his well-being, then disclosed the alleged assault.

Police found Taylor in Tops- ham a few hours later. He was accused of raping the student between 1 and 1:30 a.m., after the two had spent time in his dorm room in the basement of Coleman Hall, eating pizza and drinking shots of alcohol. The woman said he carried her into his bedroom and began to have sex with her. She told police that he did not hold her down or threaten her and she did not fight him, but she did not give her consent to the encounter.

When she began crying, the encounter stopped, and Taylor left his room to take a walk to a nearby foot bridge.

The two exchanged text messages, including one in which Taylor called himself a “monster,” according to court records. The woman went looking for him, fearing he would harm himself, before calling security.

In 2014, the most recent year for which data was available, there were 17 rapes reported on Bowdoin’s campus, a three-fold increase from the year before. Among colleges and universities in Maine, only the University of Maine, which has more than six times the number of Bowdoin’s 1,800 students, had as many reported rapes.

Data compiled by The Washington Post on campus rape statistics indicated that in 2014 among colleges nationwide, Bowdoin had the fifth highest rate of reported rapes per 1,000 students, at 8.3. Reed College in Oregon, with an enrollment of 1,453, had the highest rate, with nearly 13 reported rapes per 1,000 students.

Bowdoin officials last year attributed the high number of reported rapes to a greater awareness about campus sex crimes and to new federal rules about how to report campus sex assault cases. College officials said the number can be misleading because rapes are recorded in the year they are reported, not the year the rape allegedly occurred, and that during training sessions on improving crime reporting methods, some students came forward to report crimes that occurred in earlier years.

All colleges and universities that receive federal funding must collect crime statistics and report them annually to the FBI through the federal Clery Act.

ALFRED — Carlton L. Young never touched or physically hurt 62-year-old Connie Loucks, but he has been charged with her death under Maine’s felony murder law.

Police believe that Loucks died of a heart attack in her home after suspected burglars, including Young, knocked on her windows and doors. But the burglars never came into her home in Wells that day, March 22, 2015.

Under Maine law, a felony murder conviction requires that one or more people causes another person’s death while committing or attempting to commit another crime, such as robbery or kidnapping. Legal experts say the case likely will revolve around whether Loucks’ death was “a reasonably foreseeable consequence” of Young’s alleged actions.

The state Attorney General’s Office, which prosecutes all homicides in Maine, applies the charge only about once every two or three years, said Timothy Feeley, a spokesman for the office.

In a fatal Portland shooting in 2010, for example, prosecutors used the charge to convict Moses Okot of felony murder as the getaway driver. In a mugging in Portland in 1980, prosecutors used the charge to convict robber Dennis Reardon after he roughed up a 67-year-old man to steal his wallet. The man lived long enough to flag down police and tell them what happened before succumbing to a heart attack.

In Reardon’s case, the state’s highest court rejected his 1984 appeal in which he argued in part that he shouldn’t have been held responsible for the heart attack suffered by the victim, George Webb, even though Reardon threw him to the ground.

In Loucks’ case, burglars broke into her Wells home on March 21, 2015, when no one was home. When burglars returned the next day and knocked on the windows and doors when she was present, Loucks died of a heart attack while talking on the phone with her daughter, telling her about the burglars’ return.

Police later identified Young as one of the burglars.

Jim Burke, a professor at the University of Maine School of Law, said many states have similar felony murder laws that could be used to convict someone in a case like Reardon’s, where an assault or direct contact took place between the defendant and victim.

But Burke said that in Loucks’ death, where there was no physical contact between her and Young, he expects both the prosecution and defense will have grounds to argue why or why not Maine’s felony murder law should apply in the case.

“I would think this is close to the line,” Burke said. “Showing up at the window and saying ‘boo,’ the jury will have to decide if that meets the definition of felony murder. Then if it does, the Law Court will have to decide which side of the line that falls (on).”

CASE MAY HINGE ON KEY CLAUSE

Almost every state in the U.S. has some type of felony murder rule in its criminal statutes, said Charles Weisselberg, who teaches criminal law and procedures at the University of California, Berkeley.

The threshold for proving that someone committed felony murder varies from state to state, but Weisselberg said the law is commonly used throughout the country because it is easier for a prosecutor to get a conviction for felony murder than it is for murder.

Weisselberg, however, could envision a court battle over the provision in Maine’s law that requires the prosecution to prove Loucks’ death was “a reasonably foreseeable consequence” of a felony crime committed by Young.

“The Maine case could be difficult to prove, that by banging on a window or door you intended to kill a person,” Weisselberg said.

Bob Weisberg, co-director of the Stanford University Criminal Justice Center at Stanford Law School in California, also pointed to the foreseeable consequence clause as the key to the case.

“The fact that (Young) never touched the victim is not legally relevant under the felony murder rule,” Weisberg said. “The statute creates a line of murder liability, even if you are just along for the ride.”

“The oddity here is there was no physical contact. It doesn’t shock me that a prosecutor would push for this,” Weisberg said. “If there was a reasonably foreseeable consequence, felony murder can apply, but that’s where the argument will focus in court.”

Weisberg said the Maine case will be interesting to watch.

“I think it’s a bit of a stretch, but it will depend on the jury,” he said.

Weisberg said there have been cases tried in courts nationwide involving felony murder convictions, and the circumstances almost always are very different.

In one case, two men entered a store with the intention of robbing it, but the store owner shot and killed one of the robbers. The dead man’s accomplice was convicted of felony murder.

“There are a lot of very complicated permutations to this law,” Weisberg said. “The bottom line is if you try to commit a dangerous felony, all kinds of crap can happen.”

Young, 24, of Sanford, was indicted by a York County grand jury on the felony murder charge Tuesday, more than a year after his arrest and as he remained in custody awaiting trial in the York County Jail in Alfred.

He had appeared in York County Superior Court on May 10 for a scheduled plea in the case on charges of burglary, attempted burglary and theft. But after he backed out of the plea deal, prosecutors sought an additional charge against him.

POLICE FIND UNRESPONSIVE VICTIM

Young is one of four people accused of participating in a burglary ring in southern Maine to support their drug habits. The others in the ring include Brian Cerullo, 26, of Alfred; Cathy Carle, 23, of Sanford; and Marissa Vieira, 24, of Sanford.

Of the four, prosecutors have so far charged only Young in Loucks’ death. His arraignment date on the felony murder charge had not been set by Wednesday afternoon. He had previously pleaded not guilty to the other charges against him.

Cerullo, Carle and Vieira are each scheduled to appear in court to enter their guilty pleas and be sentenced on June 23, although details of how their cases may be resolved are not included in court records.

The four are accused of breaking into Loucks’ unlocked home on March 21, 2015, and stealing many pieces of jewelry. Wells Police Officer Mark Rogers told Loucks after she reported the burglary that police believed the theft was committed by burglars who went door to door, first knocking to see if the houses were unoccupied.

The same burglars returned the next day, on March 22, to steal from her again, according to an affidavit filed in Young’s court files by Wells police Detective Todd Bayha. This time, Loucks was at home and told them to leave.

She then called Rogers on the phone to tell him she believed the burglars had returned.

“They were banging on the windows and doors of the residence. And when she asked them what they wanted, they stated they were looking for ‘Billy,’ ” Loucks told Rogers in that phone call, at 12:32 p.m.

Louck’s daughter, Sarah Loucks, called the Wells Police Department nine minutes later, at 12:41 p.m., to report that she had just been on the phone with her mother when the phone line suddenly went dead, Bayha wrote in his affidavit.

When Rogers and another officer arrived at Loucks’ home on Wire Road minutes later, they forced their way into the house and found her unresponsive on the couch. They were unable to revive her. It was determined that she had died of a heart attack. The dates in the police affidavit for the burglary and Loucks’ death differ from those released Tuesday by the Attorney General’s Office.

Investigators were able to charge the foursome with the string of burglaries after they discovered some of the stolen items had been sold at a pawn shop in Biddeford under Carle’s name. When confronted by authorities, Carle confessed that she and the others had committed the robberies, according to Bayha’s affidavit.

Young has a lengthy record of convictions dating to 2011 for crimes such as criminal mischief, assault, carrying a concealed weapon, driving under the influence, theft and burglary.

At the time of his arrest, he was serving a two-year probation term for a felony burglary conviction. A four-year prison sentence in that case had been suspended, according to a Maine State Bureau of Identification database.

If convicted of felony murder, Young faces up to 30 years in prison. The more serious charge of murder is punishable by a minimum of 25 years and up to life in prison.

Staff Writer Dennis Hoey contributed to this report.

A man convicted of a South Portland armed robbery has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether Maine’s courts overstepped their bounds by stripping him of his constitutional right to a lawyer at trial and by ordering him to represent himself.

If the nation’s highest court takes up Joshua Nisbet’s case, it could become a national test of where people’s rights to a lawyer in a criminal case end, and whether criminal defendants can be forced to represent themselves as punishment for misbehavior.

Although Nisbet had no one to represent him at his trial in 2014, he has an attorney now. Jamesa Drake, an adjunct professor at University of Maine School of Law with a law practice in Auburn, filed a petition on his behalf to the U.S. Supreme Court that was docketed on June 1.

There is no guarantee the high court will hear the case, but Drake argues in her 24-page petition that federal appellate courts have issued conflicting opinions on the question and that state courts also have different standards.

“This court should grant review to resolve a deep split among the federal courts of appeal and state courts over whether a criminal defendant must expressly waive the right to counsel or whether and under what circumstances he may implicitly waive or forfeit that right,” Drake wrote in the petition.

Donald Macomber, an assistant attorney general for the state of Maine, said that he or one of his colleagues will sign on as the opposing party in the U.S. Supreme Court docket after receiving formal notice of Drake’s petition. But he said the state will not file a reply unless the high court asks for one.

Nisbet’s case was unprecedented in Maine. He remained in jail for about three years after his arrest in 2011 while awaiting trial, and during that time refused to cooperate with five different court-appointed attorneys.

The trial judge found that Nisbet threatened his fourth and fifth court-appointed attorneys during an interview at the jail and ruled that the court had “no other alternative” than to order Nisbet to represent himself. Nisbet has no legal training and repeatedly protested the judge’s decision, saying at each step that he wanted legal representation.

Nisbet, 39, most recently of Scarborough, was convicted of the robbery charge May 1, 2014, and sentenced to seven years in prison.

Nisbet appealed to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, but the state’s highest justices unanimously rejected his claims in a decision issued on March 1.

“Nisbet waived his right to counsel because he willfully engaged in misconduct that the court appropriately warned him would result in the loss of representation,” the high court’s decision states. “Nisbet also forfeited his right to counsel because he engaged in egregious misconduct that manipulated that right in a way that was substantially detrimental to the court’s ability to administer justice, and because no lesser alternative was available to the court.”

Drake argued in her petition that the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled previously that a criminal defendant could be barred from the courtroom at trial, but had never found that a defendant’s right to an attorney could be forfeited and unwillingly waived for misbehavior.

“The deprivation of counsel cannot be used as punishment. The Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments are not that fickle,” Drake wrote.

Drake said in the petition that some federal appellate courts and state courts, including Maine’s, have adopted the doctrine that defendants can be found to have forfeited their right to an attorney. Other state and federal courts hold that defendants can be found, over their objection, to have waived counsel through poor conduct. And still other state and federal courts do not recognize either position.

Macomber said the Attorney General’s Office will await word this fall on whether the Supreme Court will take up the issue.

A 23-year-old man was critically injured Thursday night when he was stabbed in an altercation at an apartment in Bath.

Bath police Sgt. Michael Lathrop said the man was stabbed in the abdomen and was taken by ambulance to Maine Medical Center in Portland, where he had surgery and was listed in critical condition.

Police did not release his identity Thursday night.

Lathrop said police were called to the apartment building at 32 South St. around 7:22 p.m. to investigate a report of a stabbing and found the victim standing near a storefront at the corner of Washington and South streets with another man.

Lathrop said the officers, after attending to the victim, went to the apartment and arrested a man, who was later released and not charged.

Four men were in the apartment when the stabbing happened. One suffered a blow to the head; a second got a cut to his thumb. Police are not sure what provoked the violence and the case remains under investigation.

A butterfly knife, which folds, was used in the assault.

A 35-year-old man was taken into police custody early Sunday in Brunswick after a six-hour standoff in which he threatened to kill himself with a gun.

Brunswick police said the incident started about 8:22 p.m. Saturday, when Lewiston police notified agencies in the area to look for a white 2014 BMW whose driver had threatened to kill himself after a disturbance in Lewiston.

Police did not release his name, but said no one was injured in the incident.

The car was seen by Topsham police and officers from the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office, who pursued it to 383 Mere Point Road in Brunswick, where the man fled into a house.

The Brunswick Police Department’s Special Response Team was called in and the road was closed to traffic between Simpsons Point and Rossmore roads.

The man refused to leave the home and threatened to kill himself if police entered. Police said there were at least two other guns in the house.

At 2:16 a.m. Sunday, the man was taken into custody and brought to Mid Coast Hospital for evaluation.

Brunswick police said he will face unspecified charges when he is released. He may also face charges in Lisbon and Topsham.

The Cumberland County Emergency Services Unit and the Freeport police canine unit also helped at the scene.

Beth Quimby can be contacted at 791-6363 or at:

bquimby@pressherald.com

A Limington man has been charged with murder in the death of his next-door neighbor.

Doug Flint, 55, of 546 Ossipee Trail was found dead Saturday morning in the backyard of the home of his neighbor Bruce Akers, 57, of 540 Ossipee Trail, Maine State Police said Sunday.

Akers was charged with murder later Saturday and is being held without bail at the York County Jail in Alfred.

Flint’s relatives reported him missing Friday to the York County Sheriff’s Office. His body was found by police dogs Saturday on Akers’ property. State police did not disclose how he died.

Pat Malone, who lives nearby, said he knew both Akers and Flint, WCSH-TV reported.

Malone said Akers mentioned having had difficulties with Flint.

“I knew he was having a tough time with him,” Malone told the Portland TV station.

Attempts to reach Flint’s family were unsuccessful Sunday night.

Akers will make his first appearance in York County Superior Court on Monday, said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.

An autopsy on Flint was performed Sunday at the state medical examiner’s office, but McCausland said Sunday night that the results were still pending.

He said more details are likely to be released Monday.

Staff Writer Dennis Hoey contributed to this report.

Beth Quimby can be contacted at 791-6363 or at:

bquimby@pressherald.com

A person was shot Sunday morning at a home in Eddington, but authorities have released few details.

The shooting happened around 6 a.m. at 30 Hill St. in Eddington. The victim was taken to a nearby hospital with potentially life-threatening injuries, WLBZ-TV reported.

Authorities said a person entered the home around 6 a.m., and was then shot by someone inside.

The two parties involved knew each other, the Bangor TV station quoted police as saying.

A weapon has been recovered but no charges have been filed.

Deputies from the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office have turned the investigation over to Maine State Police.

A shoplifting charge against Nancie Atwell – the Maine educator awarded $1 million last year when she won a prestigious international teaching prize – will be dropped if she stays out of trouble for two years, undergoes a psychological evaluation, completes 100 hours of community service and proves that she is donating the prize money to her own school.

The plea arrangement, called a deferred disposition, was formalized Monday in District Court in Wiscasset, and was approved by Assistant District Attorney Katie Hollstrom. Atwell was not present at the hearing, but was represented by Damariscotta attorney William Avantaggio.

Avantaggio said the prize money is disbursed in annual $100,000 increments, and Atwell has already forwarded this year’s payment to the Center for Teaching and Learning, the Edgecomb school she founded in 1990.

Atwell was the first recipient, in March 2015, of the Global Teacher Prize.

Although Atwell entered a guilty plea during Monday’s hearing, the court will only accept it if she breaks the conditions of the deal. If she is not accused of further crimes in the two-year period and satisfies the other conditions, the charge will be dismissed in June 2018.

Avantaggio was critical of the deal, but said it offered his client a known outcome without incurring more legal fees.

“This seemed to be the best way to see things through,” he said.

In a statement, Hollstrom declined to say why her office included the donation of the teacher’s prize as part of the deferred disposition, and referred those questions to Avantaggio, who did not return calls for comment after the hearing.

“The State does not believe this is an inappropriate resolution to this case,” Hollstrom said. “When reviewing a case and making a recommendation the State takes into account all known circumstances of the defendant and all known circumstances of the case.”

The school has ended its academic year, and no one could be reached to verify whether Atwell has donated the prize money as she had said she would. The school’s latest I-990 tax filing is for the 2013 tax year. A more recent filing that might include more current information on any large contributions to the nonprofit school was not immediately available.

A telephone message left for Atwell was not returned, and no one answered the door at her Southport home Monday.

Damariscotta police were called to the Renys department store in April after security recorded Atwell taking a $14.99 blouse from a rack, rolling it up and placing it in another bag and walking out of the store without paying for it.

Although Avantaggio said his client had a “viable defense,” the deferred disposition deal was the least costly option for her.

Avantaggio said what was captured on video was a clumsy attempt at exchanging another item from the store, but at the time she was summonsed, police said she never tried to return another item.

Reached immediately after she was issued the summons by Damariscotta police, Atwell and Head of School Matt MacDonald both said Atwell was innocent.

“I am not guilty,” Atwell told the Press Herald in April. “This is a misunderstanding. I have no further comment.”

Before founding the school in 1990, Atwell previously taught middle school English and writing in Boothbay Harbor.

The Global Teacher Prize was created by the Varkey Foundation, a philanthropic offshoot of Global Education Management Systems, a Dubai-based company and the largest operator of private elementary and secondary schools in the world. It has schools in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, North America and Europe.

Other finalists for the prize included educators from Indonesia, the United Kingdom, India, Haiti, Kenya, Cambodia, Afghanistan and two other teachers from the United States. The award was created to elevate the profession of teaching and improve education.

Atwell was chosen from a field of 5,000 nominees from 127 countries who were winnowed down to 50 in January 2015 and then to 10 finalists. After winning the award, she said she planned to donate the full amount to her school to fund scholarships, book purchases and building maintenance projects.

About 40 to 50 teachers from around the world go to the Edgecomb school each year to study the teaching methods of its 10 full- and part-time staff members. The student teachers’ tuition goes toward a scholarship fund for students who cannot afford the school’s annual $8,500 tuition. The school has an enrollment of 69 students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

Atwell has written nine books on teaching, one of which has sold more than 500,000 copies.

LIMINGTON — A Limington man ended a long-running dispute with his neighbor by killing him with a machete and then covering his body with rotting deer carcasses, police said.

Bruce Akers, 57, appeared briefly in York County Superior Court in Alfred on a charge of murder Monday. He entered the courtroom flanked by his attorneys, his head down, and was ordered held without bail, which is common in murder cases.

A affidavit by Maine State Police Detective Corey Pike described the grisly attack Akers allegedly carried out on his neighbor, Douglas Flint, over the weekend.

The detective wrote that Akers and Flint, who lived next to each other on Ossipee Trail, had previous run-ins, including incidents in which Akers trespassed on Flint’s property and in one instance, bathed in Flint’s pool.

Akers first called the York County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday because he believed Flint had stolen a six-pack of beer from him, along with other items.

Flint’s daughter Amanda Flint and his brother Roy Flint called the sheriff’s office Friday to report the 55-year-old missing. Amanda Flint worried that her father might have been suicidal after the 2014 death of his wife, Dawn, the detective wrote. When investigators interviewed Flint’s relatives in person, family members told the authorities that there had been a history of disagreements between Flint and Akers.

Officers went to Flint’s house Friday and did not locate him. They then went to Akers’ property and found Akers in his camper. They asked him if Flint was still alive. Akers told them he wasn’t, and then, when asked if he could take them to Flint, he said he could.

“The guy just wouldn’t leave me alone,” Akers said, according to Pike’s affidavit.

Akers was taken in for questioning and told police he had planned to call authorities, but “wanted a few hours of freedom … I can’t say that I’ve enjoyed it that much.”

Detectives noticed scratches on his finger, shins, back, arm and abdomen. They obtained a search warrant for Akers’ property, where a search dog found Flint’s body, covered with rotting deer carcasses. More deer carcasses were found near Akers’ camper.

A machete that tested positive for the presence of blood was found in the camper.

An autopsy conducted Sunday found that Flint had nearly been decapitated, dying of severe and extensive blunt and sharp injuries to his head and neck.

Akers said nothing during his court appearance Monday and mostly looked at the floor as he stood between his attorneys, Robert LeBrasseur and Paul Aranson. He was not required to enter a plea at the hearing. LeBrasseur told Justice Wayne Douglas that Akers agreed to postpone his right to have a Harnish hearing to decide whether he was eligible for bail until a later date. His next court appearance is scheduled for September.

Outside the courtroom afterward, LeBrasseur declined to comment on details of the case, because he was just appointed to represent Akers on Monday morning.

“I just want the opportunity to get to know my client and get to know the facts,” LeBrasseur said.

The prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General Robert Ellis, spoke outside the courthouse after meeting with the members of Flint’s family who attended the hearing. They all declined to speak to the media.

“They’re struggling,” Ellis said of Flint’s family. “It’s very emotional.”

Ellis also declined to comment on specifics of the case, other than to say police are continuing to investigate and examine evidence.

“There is a lot of information to be analyzed,” he said. “The case will be presented to a grand jury as soon as applicable.”

Ossipee Trail, or Route 25, becomes increasingly rural as it winds northwest away from Greater Portland, through Westbrook, Gorham and Standish, before reaching Limington, a town of about 3,700 residents. The stretch of main road is heavily wooded on both sides. Driveways, mostly dirt, branch off into the dense forest, which renders most houses invisible to those passing by.

The properties owned by Akers and Flint were adjacent and shared a dirt driveway. On Monday, that driveway still had yellow police tape across it but detectives were no longer at the scene. No one answered the door at Flint’s home.

Town officials said Akers previously owned both properties – a total of 7 acres – but split the land up several years ago after a divorce. Akers retained three acres for himself and sold the other four. Flint and his wife bought the four acres in April 2013 from the new owner after it was foreclosed and added a 24-foot-by-36-foot dwelling in 2014, according to town records.

Akers was two years behind on his property taxes, a town official said.

A neighbor whose family has lived on that stretch of Ossipee Trail for decades said Akers lived in a small trailer on the back of the property. He bred and sold huskies, said the neighbor, who declined to give her name.

“He lived in his own little world back there,” she said.

Both Flint’s brother and daughter told authorities that they knew Akers had exhibited odd behavior in the past.

Amanda Flint said her father and Akers had disagreements, including instances when Akers trespassed in her father’s house or left pieces of scrap metal on his property. She said her father had told her of one incident in which he and his late wife found Akers in their pool. Her father once told her never to allow Akers near her children, she told deputies.

Akers’ previous criminal history dates to 1980, including misdemeanor convictions for theft, disorderly conduct, assault and unlawful possession of fireworks.

ALFRED — A burglary suspect who is accused of causing a Wells woman’s fatal heart attack by knocking on her door and windows during a 2015 attempted break-in pleaded not guilty Monday to a charge of felony murder.

Carlton L. Young, 24, of Sanford said nothing at the brief hearing in York County Superior Court as he stood in a three-piece charcoal suit beside his attorney, Rick Winling. Winling entered the plea for Young and spoke on his behalf before Justice John O’Neil Jr.

Young had already pleaded not guilty at a prior court appearance to multiple burglary and theft-related charges. He was required to appear in court Monday to entered his plea to the felony murder charge after being indicted anew more than a year after his arrest.

The prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Thaddeus West, did not seek to alter Young’s previously set bail amount of $30,000 cash.

The woman who died, 62-year-old Connie Loucks, was on the phone with her daughter when the line went dead shortly after Loucks told her that she thought the same burglars who had stolen her belongings the day before had returned.

Young was initially accused of being part of a burglary ring that broke into houses in southern Maine. He and at least one other person allegedly broke into Loucks’ home on March 21, 2015, when she wasn’t home, and then returned the next day to break in again, according to court records.

Prosecutors brought the felony murder charge after Young backed out of a scheduled plea and sentencing hearing on May 10 to the burglary charges. Young has remained in jail since his arrest in the days after Loucks’ death.

Under Maine law, a felony murder conviction requires that one or more people cause another person’s death while committing or attempting to commit another crime, such as robbery or kidnapping. Legal experts say the case likely will revolve around whether Loucks’ death was “a reasonably foreseeable consequence” of Young’s alleged actions.

Felony murder is a lesser offense than murder. If convicted of felony murder, Young faces up to 30 years in prison. Murder is punishable by a minimum of 25 years and up to life in prison.

Young is one of four people accused of participating in a burglary ring in southern Maine to support their drug habits. The others in the ring include Brian Cerullo, 26, of Alfred; Cathy Carle, 23, of Sanford; and Marissa Vieira, 24, of Sanford.

Of the four, prosecutors have so far charged only Young in Loucks’ death.

Cerullo, Carle and Vieira are each scheduled to appear in court to enter their guilty pleas and be sentenced on June 23, although details of how their cases may be resolved are not included in court records.

The four are accused of breaking into Loucks’ unlocked home on March 21, 2015, and stealing many pieces of jewelry. Wells police Officer Mark Rogers told Loucks after she reported the burglary that police believed the theft was committed by burglars who went door to door, first knocking to see if the houses were unoccupied.

The same burglars returned the next day, on March 22, to steal from her again, according to an affidavit in Young’s court files by Wells police Detective Todd Bayha. This time, Loucks was at home and told them to leave.

She then called Rogers on the phone to tell him she believed the burglars had returned.

“They were banging on the windows and doors of the residence. And when she asked them what they wanted, they stated they were looking for ‘Billy,’ ” Loucks told Rogers in that phone call, at 12:32 p.m.

Loucks’ daughter, Sarah Loucks, called the Wells Police Department nine minutes later, at 12:41 p.m., to report that she had just been on the phone with her mother when the phone line suddenly went dead, Bayha wrote in his affidavit.

When Rogers and another officer arrived at Loucks’ home on Wire Road minutes later, they forced their way into the house and found her unresponsive on the couch. They were unable to revive her.

It was determined that she had died of a heart attack.

Investigators charged the foursome with the string of burglaries after they discovered some of the stolen items had been sold at a pawnshop in Biddeford under Carle’s name. When confronted by authorities, Carle confessed that she and the others had committed the burglaries, according to Bayha’s affidavit.

Lisbon police arrested a local man Monday night in connection with a hit-and-run crash Saturday night on Route 196 that caused the death of a motorcyclist from Portland.

Lisbon Police Chief David Brooks said the accident turned into a fatal on Monday when the motorcyclist, 28-year-old Jeffrey A. Sickel of Grant Street in Portland, died from his injuries at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston.

Detectives arrested Zachery Greene, 23, of Lisbon at his home on Spring Street on Monday night. He was taken to the Androscoggin County Jail in Auburn, where he was charged with leaving the scene of a personal injury accident. His bail was set at $2,000 cash.

Brooks said the District Attorney’s Office could decide to bring additional charges against Greene. His pickup truck has been impounded and will be inspected by the Maine State Police.

Police said Greene was driving westbound along Route 196 around 10:30 p.m. Saturday when he turned onto Memorial Street into the path of Sickel’s motorcycle, which was headed east. Emergency responders found Sickel lying unresponsive in the middle of the road with severe head injuries.

Police said Sickel was not wearing a helmet, but a helmet was found lying on the ground near the crash site.

AMARILLO, Texas – A suspect has been shot and “is apparently dead” after officers responded Tuesday to a reported shooting inside a Walmart store in Amarillo, Texas, police said.

The Amarillo Police Department released a brief statement saying hostages inside the store were safe and described the incident as a “workplace violence event.” No details were immediately provided about the suspect or what may have prompted the incident, but police urged residents to avoid the area.

Police said officers responded to the scene amid reports late Tuesday morning that an armed person was at the store and may have had hostages. Police later said officers had made their way inside the store and that a police SWAT crew shot the suspect. Police said there was “no shooting ongoing at this moment.”

The city of Amarillo released a statement also saying emergency officials were on the scene of an “active shooter incident.” The city said there was no immediate word of injuries.

Authorities said the investigation was ongoing in Amarillo, a city in the Texas Panhandle. Some nearby streets were closed as a precaution during the incident, including an off ramp to Interstate 27.

A Massachusetts man accused of bringing a mentally disabled woman to his family camp in Sebago to rape her was sentenced Tuesday in an indirectly-related child pornography case to four years in federal prison.

William Francis Duffy, 58, of Attleboro, Massachusetts, had child pornography on a computer seized by Cumberland County sheriff’s deputies after they were called to his Sebago camp on May 2, 2015, when the woman was able to surreptitiously call 911 for help, according to court records.

Authorities ultimately charged Duffy in two cases, one in state court for charges including rape and the other in federal court for a charge of possession of child pornography involving prepubescent minors.

Duffy pleaded guilty in the federal case on Feb. 23 before Judge George Singal in U.S. District Court in Portland. Evidence in that case included 4,475 still images and 261 video files of children being sexually abused, many depicting adults abusing prepubescent minors and infants, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Singal also sentenced Duffy on Tuesday to serve five years of supervised release after completion of his federal prison term. He was also ordered to pay $5,000 in restitution.

Duffy pleaded not guilty in the state case, and that case remains pending in the Cumberland County Courthouse in Portland. He is next scheduled to appear there on Wednesday for a dispositional conference.

In the state case, Duffy faces 54 charges – four counts of gross sexual assault, two counts of unlawful sexual contact and 48 counts of possession of sexually explicit material.

Duffy allegedly had an online chat with the 31-year-old woman over three weeks on a website for abused women. The woman complained of being abused and denied medication at her group home in Carver, Massachusetts.

Duffy offered to help her escape, the sheriff’s office said last year. She sneaked out and the pair drove to a camp in Sebago owned by Duffy’s parents.

Police said Duffy then had sex with the woman, who told an investigator she did not feel she could say no.

Police said the alleged victim appeared to have the intellectual capacity of a 9-year-old. She was able to secretly call police on a cellphone and hide the phone under her pillow as she and Duffy were having sex.

Cumberland County sheriff’s deputies working with the Regional Communications Center in Gray traced the call to Northwest River Road in Sebago, where they found Duffy and the woman.

Deputies executing a search warrant discovered a backpack containing sexual devices and other items, including heavy-duty plastic zip ties, a “pet safe” shock collar, two rolls of duct tape and two 100-foot lengths of rope.

During the encounter, Duffy threatened the woman and said if she did not have sex with him, he would tie her up and have sex with her anyway, the sheriff’s office said. Duffy also told her he was taking her to Rhode Island, which was where she thought she was, the sheriff’s office said.

A Portland man has been indicted by the Cumberland County grand jury on 110 child pornography-related charges, up from the single count brought against him at the time of his arrest last year.

Glenn Strout, 53, of 139 Beverly St. was first arrested Dec. 11, when police searched his home and discovered what they say was child pornography in his possession. He was charged at that time with a single count of possession of sexually explicit material of a child under 12 years old.

Prosecutors presented their case against Strout to the grand jury, which returned an indictment charging Strout with 22 counts of dissemination of sexually explicit material of a child under the age of 12 and 88 counts of possession of sexually explicit material of a child under 12 years old, the District Attorney’s Office announced Monday.

The dissemination charge is a Class B felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The possession charge is a Class C felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.

The indictment comes after Strout was arrested again in March on a bail violation charge when police conducted a random search at his house and found computers in his possession.

At the time of Strout’s second arrest, Assistant Chief Vern Malloch of the Portland police issued a public statement in response to concerns of his neighbors.

“Area residents have been concerned about Strout’s release on bail because it is thought that he had videotaped neighborhood children from his home as they played outside. Strout is not accused of any crime relating to this activity and he has not been convicted of any crime. He should be presumed innocent at this time,” Malloch said in the written statement in March.

Strout is next scheduled to appear in court to face the child pornography charges on July 6. He has yet to enter a plea to the charges.

Scott Dolan can be contacted at 791-6304 or at:

sdolan@pressherald.com

Twitter: scottddolan