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A Milford man has been sentenced to life in prison for attacking his girlfriend with a hammer before police shot him back in 2023.
Djvan Carter, 47, was tried in Penobscot County Superior Court this winter on charges of aggravated attempted murder, elevated aggravated assault, kidnapping, aggravated assault and terrorizing with a dangerous weapon.
The Penobscot County district attorney’s office said Tuesday that Carter received a life’s sentence.
On the morning of May 26, 2023, a woman called police to report that Carter had struck his girlfriend on the head with a hammer and that he was suicidal, according to the Maine attorney general’s office.
Troopers and Penobscot County sheriff’s deputies began their search for Carter and his girlfriend’s vehicle.
Cpl. Blaine Silk and another state trooper found the girlfriend’s vehicle backed up against a gate on Indian Nations Road in Alton.
Silk and the other trooper took cover behind a police cruiser with their pistols drawn. (Carter had served 17 years in prison for shooting a police officer in North Carolina, according to an attorney general’s office report.) They ordered both occupants out of the vehicle, but neither exited.
The troopers then saw what they believed was someone striking another person.
As the troopers approached the vehicle, Carter accelerated backward, striking the gate, and then sped toward the officers.
Silk feared Carter would “run him over” or kill his girlfriend, so he fired several shots at Carter, who then drove into a ditch. Carter then lunged at his girlfriend, and Silk fired again, according to investigators with the attorney general’s office, which in December 2023 cleared Silk in the shooting.
The girlfriend then emerged from the vehicle covered in blood.
Both Carter and his girlfriend were taken to Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. Carter was treated for a gunshot wound to the chest.
Carter had been on probation for domestic violence assault after receiving a suspended sentence three weeks earlier. That was related to an assault in Brewer in March 2022.
During opening arguments, Carter’s defense attorney, Zachary Frey, said his client confessed to the attack but hadn’t intended to kill her. Frey told the court in January that both Carter and his then-girlfriend had smoked methamphetamine that morning.
But prosecutors said that the attack left the woman “fighting for her life” and that Carter continued his attack even as police arrived to save her life.
Carter remained at the Penobscot County Jail in Bangor on Wednesday morning, according to the jail.
