- Lewis County Sirens.com - https://lewiscountysirens.com -

Nine month sentence for Randle beating death

2012.0106.massa.sent.lafontaine_2 [1]

Right to left, Guy LaFontaine's daughter Kandace Barton, son Eric LaFontaine and family friend William Young listen as Gail LaFontaine speaks to the court about her husband's death

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – Gail LaFontaine’s husband had been badly beaten.

The 58-year-old welder from Federal Way had broken ribs, broken eye sockets, a broken forearm and what a sheriff’s detective described as a shoe or boot print on his head.

After spending some five hours in the emergency room at Morton General Hospital, where they sewed up a gash in his head, Guy LaFontaine’s wife was given a CD, an appointment for the following Monday with a facial re-constructionist and hope, lots of hope.

2010.1210.guylafontaine.mug_2 [2]

Guy LaFontaine

The 60-year-old woman took her husband and headed home in the middle of the night to Federal Way, on the back roads, she said.

Her daughter Kandace Barton followed them. The three had been together at the Randle home of taxidermist Erik Massa.

“He said, ‘Gail, I’m hot’, and I rolled the window down,” Gail LaFontaine said of her ailing husband. “And he grabbed my thumb.”

“Then he said, ‘Gail, I’m cold’,” she said. She turned on the heat.

“He laid back and I thought, good, he’s resting,” she said. “And he squeezed my thumb.”

When they pulled off the freeway, her daughter rolled her car window down and said ‘Mom, I don’t think he’s moving right, we’re going to St. Francis (Hospital)”, according to Gail LaFontaine.

When they arrived at the hospital, her husband of some 30 years was dead.

Massa, 44, was charged with second-degree murder in the March 14, 2010 death.

2011.0224.erik.masa.small_2 [3]

Erik R. Massa

Under an arrangement formalized today, his case was  pleaded down to second-degree assault and he was sentenced to as much as the judge could give someone with no criminal history – nine months in jail.

LaFontaine, who worked at Todd Shipyard in Seattle, was described in court today as a union representative so beloved, some of the Korean workers he assisted would literally bow to him and his wife.

Lewis County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher told a judge this afternoon there were no marks on the defendant; it was not a neutral fight.

“This is a particularly brutal beating, and there seems to be no reason for it,” Meagher said.

However, Meagher said, the pathologist who conducted the autopsy suggested LaFontaine’s death involved the altercation as well as heart disease and diabetes.

“And for whatever reason, Mr. LaFontaine was either forced to go or checked out of the hospital,” Meagher said.

Meagher said he would have had a hard time proving the cause of death at trial. Also, one witness has died [4] and a significant piece of evidence had been suppressed – a broken shotgun found in a silo on Massa’s property, according to Meagher.

The standard sentencing range for second-degree assault is three to nine months in jail. Meagher recommended nine months. Defense attorney Chris Baum recommended three months.

Lewis County Superior Court Judge James Lawler chose nine months and ordered the defendant to be evaluated – and treated if necessary- for drug and alcohol abuse.

Massa spoke in court to the judge and his father-in-law’s family saying it is a family tragedy he will live with for the rest of his life.

“I did love him and I’m very sorry for what happened,” Massa said.

He admitted only to punching his father-in-law in the ribs.

Almost an hour was spent listening to family tell the judge what the sentence should be and addressing Massa, who wouldn’t look at the speakers.

Gail LaFontaine accused him of beating to death a crippled old man.

“My life is over, it’s done,” she said.

She held a photo of her smiling husband up and spoke of how much her husband adored his son-in-law.

All a person would have to do to get Guy LaFontaine to back off is remove his glasses, Massa was told.

“Erik, you’re getting out in nine months and I have terminal cancer,” she said. “You’re coming with me.”

Massa was told when one of Guy LaFontaine’s daughters heard the “worst news ever, she thought it would be her sister” – Massa’s wife who was dead.

The details of what occurred at the 11,000 block of U.S. Highway 12 in Randle won’t be heard in a trial, but bit and pieces emerged during the hearing today.

Defense attorney Baum told the judge his client didn’t hit Guy LaFontaine over the head with a shotgun.

“LaFontaine grabbed that shotgun, pointed it at my client and threatened to kill him,” Baum said. “My client wrestled the shotgun away and took it and broke it.”

There were allegations both men had been drinking.

Massa’s wife spoke of her husband’s drinking problem, and said she, her husband and both her parents were at the property that night.

It was all over the farm, it wasn’t just one spot, there was blood everywhere,” Barton said.

She described the trauma of seeing her father laying on the taxidermy shop floor, his face is smashed, and her “holding the blood in the back of his head.”

She persuaded her husband to leave, so she could get away with her toddler, she said. She wondered if they would get out alive, she told the judge.

“To know my husband is going to out in nine months and mad at me for doing this, that’s even scarier,” she said.

Massa will be subject to 18 months community custody after his release, $1,800 in financial obligations, and 10-year no contact orders with his wife and mother-in-law.

Barton filed for divorce shortly after her father died.

Massa took only one brief look toward his father-in-law’s family as he was handcuffed and led out of the courtroom.

Exactly the circumstances under which Guy LaFontaine was discharged from Morton General Hospital aren’t clear.

“It’s very sad the hospital in Morton let him leave,” defense attorney Baum said.

A sheriff’s deputy who had gone to the emergency room that night noted Guy LaFontaine’s substantial injuries, and later was notified by the hospital they couldn’t keep LaFontaine in his bed so they were releasing him.

Gail LaFontaine, who said the emergency room had lined up a LifeFlight at one point that night, characterized it this way: The doctor told her husband, “Guy, I’m tired of f-ing with you, get out.”

The King County Medical Examiner’s Office listed Guy Lafontaine’s death as a homicide caused by blunt force injuries to his head, torso and extremities.