MILBRIDGE, Maine — A Knox man who served more than a decade in prison for shooting a former girlfriend is back behind bars after he allegedly attacked a local woman with an ax last weekend.
Lewis Pinkham, town manager and police chief for Milbridge, said Thursday that Linwood E. Doughty, 54, was arrested Sunday on a charge of aggravated assault.
Doughty fled after the attack in the Washington County town. Pinkham declined to give a specific location for the incident. Doughty was taken into custody by Maine State Police a little while later after troopers pulled him over near Ellsworth, Pinkham said.
The woman was taken to Maine Coast Memorial Hospital in Ellsworth, where she was treated and has since been released, he said.
Pinkham said Doughty has a significant criminal history, having shot a different woman — a former girlfriend — in central Maine in the 1990s.
“He did 12 years in prison,” Pinkham said.
He declined to release additional details about the alleged ax attack.
Doughty remained in custody Thursday at Washington County Jail in Machias. Information about when he might appear in court in relation to the incident was unavailable Thursday evening.
In March 1995, Doughty tracked down a former girlfriend and shot her in the thigh with a high-powered rifle. The victim, who was hiding from Doughty at a relative’s house in Fairfield, managed to escape through a window and ran to a neighbor’s home to call police.
Doughty had been arrested three days earlier after he assaulted the ex-girlfriend, burning her on a wood stove and beating her and her mother with a log. Police said at the time that as soon as Doughty’s bail for that incident was paid and he was released, he began hunting his former companion.
Later that year, he was sentenced to serve 10 years in prison after he pleaded no contest in Somerset County to attempted murder and other charges, according to a copy of his criminal history obtained Thursday from the Maine Bureau of Identification. In 2004, he was sent back to prison for another two years after being found guilty of one count of assault, two counts of criminal threatening and two counts of terrorizing for an unrelated incident.
Doughty’s criminal history prior to 1995 includes convictions on charges of violating protective orders and terrorizing. One of those altercations, on Nov. 13, 1994, led to the death of Maine State Trooper Jeffrey Parola, whose cruiser crashed as he was responding to the incident.
In 2010, Doughty was sent back to prison for a year after being found guilty of criminal mischief and domestic violence assault, according to his criminal history.
