BANGOR, Maine — The local transient accused of mortally stabbing another man during a group fight on First Street in May pleaded not guilty Monday at the Penobscot Judicial Center to manslaughter.

Jason Alan Trickett, 41, was indicted in June by the Penobscot County grand jury for the stabbing of Andy D. Smith, 38, near 69 First St. about 1:45 p.m. May 22. Smith, who is survived by his wife and two children, later died at Eastern Maine Medical Center.

Superior Court Justice William Anderson continued Trickett’s $50,000 cash bail. He has been held at the Penobscot County Jail unable to make bail since his arrest on June 8 on a city bus in downtown Bangor.

The judge said defense attorneys Marvin Glazier and Hunter Tzovarras, both of Bangor, could revisit the issue of bail at a later date.

A trial date is not expected to be set until later this year.

Glazier entered the not guilty plea on his client’s behalf. Trickett wore a red jumpsuit issued by the jail.

Trickett told police that he and his friends at the apartment building at 71 First St. — which is where the knife was later located in a trash can — “all were drinking or using narcotics,” according to court documents.

An eyewitness and friend of Smith told the Bangor Daily News that Smith was arguing with a woman he once lived with out in the street when another woman intervened.

The second woman, who lives at 71 First St., “came out with a two-by-four and she hit him,” apparently in defense of the first woman, said Eugene “Shawn” Cox, a resident of 69 First St.

“He got the two-by-four away from her and she called for her friends. They all started on him.”

Seconds later, Smith was bleeding from a wound to his left rib area and was trying to get away. Cox did not see who stabbed his friend, whom he had met in middle school.

“I ran down with a pipe” and met Smith at the bottom of the steps, he said.

The last thing Smith said to his longtime friend was “to tell his kids that he loved them,” Cox said.

Smith was a 1992 graduate of Hermon High School and had studied at the University of Maine at Augusta in Bangor, then known as the University College of Bangor, according to his obituary.

If convicted, Trickett faces up to 30 years in prison and a fine of up to $50,000.


Bangor Daily News writer Nok-Noi Ricker contributed to this report.