A 22-year-old with a history of assaulting health care workers, inmates and prison employees went to prison Wednesday for separate attacks on jail and prison staff.
Zachary Blackbonnet pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and criminal mischief.
“Mr. Blackbonnet is a violent man,†Deputy Lancaster County Attorney Jan Lipovsky said.
She said he has a history of doing something, blaming it on his mental health status (he’s diagnosed bipolar) and getting a light sentence.
This time, by his own admission, he was trying to kill a corrections officer by crushing his larynx, Lipovsky said.
On Aug. 14, 2015, Blackbonnet was leaving a shower at the Lincoln Correctional Center when he lunged toward a corporal and put his hands around his neck. With additional help, another corporal was able to subdue him.
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Blackbonnet later said he punched the officer because he reminded him of his father, according to the affidavit for his arrest.
On June 5, 2016, he was at the Lancaster County jail when he refused to go back to his cell at lockdown, then started breaking ceiling tiles trying to pull out an intercom speaker.
When the extraction team arrived to control him, he charged at them with a plastic chair but slipped on water on the floor. In the scrum that followed, he punched at the officers.
“Mr. Blackbonnet’s actions in both these cases are just not acceptable,†Lipovsky said.
Deputy Lancaster County Public Defender Kristi Egger-Brown said he has been institutionalized since he was 13, the victim of severe abuse and neglect as a child. He’s been taking medication at the jail and wants to participate in a violence reduction program.
Blackbonnet said he has thought a lot about the things he has been doing. In the past, he has asked for treatment without changing his ways, he said. Now, he said, he’s trying not to do anything wrong.
“I know that me going to the Department of Corrections is not a good idea,†he said.
He asked to go to the Norfolk Regional Center, but that wasn't an option for Lancaster County District Judge Darla Ideus, who sentenced him to 6½ to 8½ years in prison.