Lewiston man sentenced to more than 3 years on gun charge

PORTLAND — A federal judge sentenced a Lewiston man Friday to more than three years in prison, after police discovered he had a stolen pink handgun that he took from his wife after she shot his car with it.

U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Torresen also sentenced Steven Walker, 35, to two years in prison for violating conditions of his supervised release from federal prison where he had been serving time for a drug charge.

On the charge of being a felon with a gun, Torresen sentenced Walker to 41 months behind bars after accepting his guilty plea to the charge, which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. After serving his time, he’ll be on supervised release for two years.

In imposing the sentence by videoconference while Walker participated from the Cumberland County Jail, Torresen said she had given him a break on his earlier drug sentence, but added that she wasn’t inclined to do that again considering the multiple violations he had committed while on supervised release.

“We’ve been down this road before,” she told Walker. “I don’t feel like I can give you a second chance or a second break.

He was driving his gray Ford Fusion sedan in Portland on May 22, 2020, when he was pulled over by police for having a “shattered” windshield, according to court records. The officer noticed what appeared to be a recent bullet hole in the roof of the car.

The night before, a shooting had been reported that involved two parties exchanging fire in and around their vehicles. Witnesses said they saw a gray Ford sedan fleeing the scene, according to court records.

Police searched Walker, finding cocaine residue on a scale, more than $2,700 in cash, a small amount of marijuana and an empty handgun magazine. Asked about the magazine’s corresponding gun, Walker said, “What gun?” He said he didn’t know what the officer was talking about, according to the court records.

During a search of Walker’s car, police found a backpack with a pink 9 mm ProMag Ruger handgun with an attached empty magazine, similar to the one found in his pocket. The gun and magazines had been reported stolen from a home safe during a break-in, according to court records. The gun owner said one of the magazines had been fully loaded and the other, partially loaded, at the time the gun was stolen.

Walker has two federal convictions for heroin possession, for which he was sentenced in 2017, making him a convicted felon who was on supervised release at the time of the traffic stop. Walker was charged in May with being a felon with a gun.

“I handled the situation horribly wrong, I know that,” Walker told Torresen on Friday.

He said he had disarmed his wife of the gun during an argument. He said she had shot his car with that gun.

“I had to defend myself,” he said.

But because he had been taking drugs and had been drinking, he hadn’t thought clearly about his actions afterward, Walker said. He didn’t call the police because “she was somebody I loved (and) I didn’t want something bad to happen to her.”

Defense attorney Dylan Boyd said Friday that Walker has struggled with substance abuse, which contributed to the poor choices he made that led to the gun charge.

During his 13-month incarceration since last year while awaiting trial, Walker’s mother died from COVID-19 and his brother died from a drug overdose. The jail has put additional restrictions in place for inmates due to the pandemic, Boyd said.

He said Walker had flourished after his prison release in 2019 to a halfway house. He worked for eight months with no violations until he was laid off through no fault of his own.

Boyd had urged Torresen to sentence Walker to only two years in prison.

But Torresen noted Walker’s repeated violations during his release, after losing his job, when he began drinking and drugging.

He was stopped in early January 2020 after driving with a 0.12% blood-alcohol content, more than the legal limit of 0.08%.

Also found in the car during the May 2020 traffic stop in Portland was crack cocaine and fentanyl that his passenger told police she and Walker had been cruising around and looking to sell.

Boyd noted that the drugs found in Walker’s car had belonged to his brother and Walker had never been charged in connection with them.

But Torresen focused on Walker’s many violations of his release, regardless of whether they resulted in new charges, including twice testing positive for marijuana use and traveling out of state without permission.

In her sentencing of Walker, Torresen ordered he be enrolled in a 500-hour substance abuse treatment program.