It appears last week was not the best week for Charles L. Williams II ? the man police say was held at gunpoint by Winfield residents who found Williams wandering around in their house March 29.
Just a day after being arrested and accused of breaking into the home of Dr. Anthony Johnstone, Williams was sentenced to 46 months in prison for crimes he committed back in December, court officials said Friday.
Turns out Williams, 42, is also the man who had too much to drink and rammed buildings in downtown Winfield late last year. Ruppelius Jewelers and a NAPA auto parts store were among the buildings hit.
The most serious charges from that incident were possession of hydrocodone and criminal damage to property. He’ll also have restitution to pay.
In addition to prison time, Williams also received time in jail for lesser crimes related to the downtown incident, including driving under the influence. So he’s set to spend more than four years in jail and prison even before making it through the court system on the charges related to the Johnstone incident.
Brett Stone, Winfield’s interim chief of police, said investigators believe Williams also was drunk when he got his car stuck in Johnstone’s backyard in the 3000 block of Cabrillo Dr. and then went inside to burglarize the home.
He faces charges that include aggravated burglary, criminal damage to property and theft in connection with the latest incident.
"Obviously he’s going to be doing some time with the Department of Corrections," Stone said. "Hopefully that will do him some good and he’ll get some help. It appears he has a serious problem with alcohol."
HISTORY OF CRIME
A prison sentence is what brought Williams to Cowley County in the first place, according to records from the Kansas Department of Corrections. He was imprisoned in May 2005 on a burglary charge in Montgomery County.
Six days before heading to prison he was picked up on a theft charge in Montgomery County and later sentenced on that count. He was transferred to Winfield Correctional Facility in Feb. 2007 and was paroled in Cowley County in June of that year.
Records show he was mostly well behaved while incarcerated, with the exception of a minor incident early in his sentence.
He was a supervised parolee until Sept. 2008 ? three months before the incident in downtown Winfield.
"SHE REALLY DIDN’T NEED ME"
It was around 2:30 a.m. March 29 when Dr. Anthony Johnstone said he and his wife, Barbara, crossed paths with Williams.
The couple was awakened from sleep by sounds coming from their kitchen, which is adjacent to their first-floor bedroom. Like anyone else, the couple has popped up in the middle of the night before to investigate a noise.
"We have a couple cats and sometimes they knock things over," Dr. Johnstone said. "But this was different, it didn’t sound right. We thought we heard footsteps."
Johnstone got up, grabbed a loaded 45-caliber pistol he keeps beside the bed and left the bedroom to investigate. There was no one inside the house but there was a cool draft coming in from some open doors leading to the garage area of the home.
It wasn’t necessarily strange that the doors were open because at times they’ve popped open on their own, he said. Johnstone shut the doors and made his way to the living room. He saw nothing but heard what he thought was a voice coming from outside.
There was a man ? who Johnstone now believes was Williams ? in the middle of the street talking on a cell phone.
"I was not well clothed at this point so I went back to the bedroom to put something on so I could go outside," he said. "My wife asked if she needed to call the police, but I said no, I didn’t want to get everyone out here if it was just some guy looking for a ride home."
Dr. Johnstone went outside and made his way down the street looking for the man on the cell phone. He found nothing but suddenly heard his wife screaming for him to return to the house.
Apparently, the time Johnstone took to get dressed gave the intruder an opportunity to head toward the house and go inside. Barbara heard the intruder in the kitchen and first thought it was her husband.
But no one answered when she called out to the kitchen, so Barbara grabbed her gun ? a 357 magnum. She went to the bedroom door.
"It was dark, but she saw someone too short and too fat to be me," Dr. Johnstone said. "He was standing by the refrigerator."
Barbara told the intruder to get down on the ground because she had a loaded weapon and was prepared to fire it. She kept the gun trained on the man and went to the front door to call for her husband.
"I came right over, but she really didn’t need me at all," Dr. Johnstone said. "She had the situation well under control."
Johnstone said he is highly experienced with weapons and taught his wife to shoot and properly handle a gun. The Johnstones asked the man to head outside and beyond that there was nothing much to be said. Police arrived no more than five minutes later and the details of the story began to unfold completely.
A WRONG TURN?
Williams’ car was found in the Johnstone’s backyard.
Investigators believe the suspect was driving around looking for a home to burglarize when he turned into the Johnstone’s drive, believing it to be a street.
The man dug some holes behind the tires of his vehicle and used some nearby landscaping materials in an effort to get unstuck. He was not successful.
Shortly after police arrived, a tow truck driver from Wichita showed up at the Johnstone home. The intruder called the company so he could be pulled from the backyard. Dr. Johnstone believes that it was Williams talking to the tow service when Johnstone first heard someone in the street.
While police questioned the intruder, the Johnstones started looking around their home and found some things missing. The intruder had three cell phones in his pockets, one of which belonged to Barbara Johnstone.
A missing laptop belonging to the couple was recovered and an empty wine bottle ? that had been half full and sitting on the Johnstone’s kitchen counter ? also turned up. Evidently the burglar polished off the wine while he waited for the tow truck.
"He seemed pretty out of it," Johnstone said.
The Johnstones said it was unnerving to think about someone being in their home while they slept. It’s apparent to them that the man spent some time in and around their home before making enough noise to wake the couple.
While Williams seems to be a fairly harmless criminal, Johnstone does not regret having a loaded weapon at the ready.
"Our kids are grown now, if we had kids in the house we wouldn’t keep a loaded weapon around," he said. "And in this instance it appears it was a clumsy criminal who had too much to drink. But you never know. Nothing like this has ever happened before but I’m glad we were ready when it did."
