GREEN RIVER — A man who stabbed his friend at least 26 times after a controversy about a missing video game console was sentenced Monday in Sweetwater County District Court to between 55 years and life in prison for second-degree murder.
William Brewer 34, entered the courtroom Monday in red jail scrubs and shackles, standing 6 feet, 6 inches tall and weighing about 280 pounds.
Much of the discussion during his five-hour-long sentencing hearing revolved around his considerable size compared with that of his victim, Colter Watsabaugh, 30, who weighed about 130 pounds and stood 5-foot-6.
The night of July 15-16, 2023, Brewer and some friends were hanging out when gossip erupted accusing Watsabaugh of stealing a Nintendo Switch, a portable video game console.
Brewer picked up Watsabaugh in a female friend’s vehilce so the others could confront the man.
Eventually, Brewer took Watsabaugh back toward his hotel, but he informed Watsabaugh during that drive that he, Brewer, had slept with the mother of Watsabaugh’s children, according to an account Brewer gave District Court Judge Richard Lavery last winter.
Here, Brewer’s account differs from the conclusion of Sweetwater County Attorney Daniel Erramouspe.
Brewer told the judge that Watsabaugh threw his phone at Brewer, freaked out, said he was going to kill Brewer and reached for the knife in his right pocket.
In response and calling forth a lifetime of trauma and self-defense, Brewer reacted by stabbing Watsabaugh, he told the court.
Brewer took Watsabaugh’s body to a remotearea, covered his lower body with sand and grass and left him. Then he dumped the SUV he’d been driving in a ravine, and eventually turned himself in to the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office, saying he’d done “something bad.”
Brewer through his public defense attorney Jon Gerard asked for a 25-to-40-year sentence.
Erramouspe asked for a sentence of 75-100 years.
Nah
Erramouspe didn’t buy the self-defense narrative.
He drew Monday from the testimony of four law enforcement personnel, including retired Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Lt. Michelle Hall, who gave a detailed blood spatter analysis in her court testimony.
Watsabaugh’s knife was found in the sage-country dirt where his body lay facedown in one pool of blood, with another pool of blood nearby as if he’d been dumped in one place then dragged again.
He was likely still alive during the dragging, Hall testified.
His knife had small amounts of blood on the handle, enough to gather DNA samples.
But it was closed during the attack, Hall concluded from the blood spatter.
It also wasn’t in his pocket during the attack, as it would have become saturated with blood.
The blood spatter on the car showed a large dripping and spatter near the passenger-side door and far-right of the passenger-side seat; smearing on the dash — but no blood on the console, said Hall.
Erramouspe put her testimony together to say that Watsabaugh was “balled up” during the attack “as far away from the mauling as he possibly could be.”
Erramouspe referred to Brewer metaphorically as a “grizzly.”
Watsabaugh had a defensive wound on his arm — a deep gash indicating his arm was bent between himself and the knife jab —and another on the middle finger of his hand, as if he fanned out his hand to block the attack.
“All Colter can do is ball up, and hope and pray that he can save himself,” said Erramouspe. “And that (Brewer) gets tired. And that he doesn’t hit anything big.”
Erramouspe showed graphic photographs he said he prepared Watsabaugh’s family for and warned them of.
They showed Watsabaugh with a gaping cheek wound into which a viewer could peer and see into his mouth. They showed a huge gaping wound on his arm; another on his finger; a large open wound on his chest; and slashes on his head, temple and arms.
This Hard LIfe
Gerard, along with a team of law students who gave presentations on Brewer’s life,noted how traumatic his life has been.
His mother took him along to buy drugs when he was just 8 years old, law student Megan Carter told the court.
Brewer became a drug runner with his uncle when he was 11.
When he was 9, a drug dealer pistol-whipped him then raped his mother in front of him, Carter added.
And he’s used drugs since age 8, starting with marijuana then progressing to crack-cocaine at age 11 and other hard drugsstarting at 14, which was also when he started working full-time to survive, she said.
Gerard declined to rule out self-defense.
Yes, Watsabaugh was much smaller than Brewer is, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t attack the man, especially since he had taken methamphetamine, said the defense attorney.
“I will never know for certain what happened and neither will the court,” said Gerard.
Yet the evidence shows that Watsabaugh carried a knife, and the two men had been on good terms prior to that night, added Gerard.
Erramouspe in his own argument had indicated that Brewer’s self-defense argument was a recent fabrication, as detectives gave Brewer several chances to claim self-defense when they interviewed him after he turned himself in.
Though Brewer turned himself in that summer, he was generally uncooperative in his interviews with detectives.
Gerard countered, saying Brewer told Gerard the self-defense story consistently over the course of eight months and didn’t change it.
Here’s Your Chance
When it was his turn to speak, Brewer was remorseful.
He always presents as pleasant and frank in court, which Lavery later pointed to as a “perplexing” dichotomy of his character, since there’s clearly “another side” to the man.
Brewer apologized to the Watsabaugh family.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” he said. “It sucks that his family is sitting there suffering because of my actions. That’s what sucks the most: the last thing I wanted was to bring pain and suffering into this world.”
Brewer vowed to become a better man regardless of how sentencing would go. He wept over the thought of not being near his children.
So Personal
Erramouspe had noted how “personal” the stab wounds seem.
He displayed one photograph that showed a stab wound right between Watsabaugh’s eyes. That one, unlike many others, could only have been delivered while Watsabaugh was holding still.
Lavery echoed the “personal” nature of a stabbing crime when he spoke.
“You were right there with a knife in your hand,” said the judge. “Terrible, awful crime.”
Both men were using meth that night, Lavery conceded. But Brewer had to know that meth is a dangerous drug, and he had to know well enough to avoid it, said the judge.
“I have great concern that you’re a dangerous man,” said Lavery. “You don’t talk like a dangerous man. But you’ve done dangerous things.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
