OLYMPIA, Wash. — A man who pleaded guilty to being connected to a fatal Olympia stabbing was sentenced to the maximum Monday.
Steven Johnson, 59, pleaded guilty in May to evidence tampering and rendering criminal assistance charges related to the killing of Nathaniel "Alex" Montoya. Johnson was sentenced to one year and 364 days, the maximum sentence on both charges.
Judge Sharonda Amamilo ordered the sentences to be served consecutively.
Shauna Montoya, the mother of Alex Montoya, said although Johnson received the maximum sentence, "The punishment does not fit the crime."
Days after the murder, police arrested four men in connection with the killing: Johnson, and three of his sons, Kevin, Michael, and Mathew Johnson.
Kevin Johnson was charged with the murder of Alex Montoya. Detectives believe he is the one who stabbed Montoya.
The other two Johnson brothers who were arrested also were charged with evidence tampering and criminal assistance.
According to investigators, the Johnsons had been living in an RV near Shauna Montoya’s West Olympia home for a couple of months.
The Johnsons told detectives that on April 30, someone had banged on their door in the middle of the night telling them to leave the neighborhood.
During the sentencing hearing, Steven Johnson said the family drove around the neighborhood and saw Alex Montoya standing in the middle of the road blocking the vehicle.
Johnson said when he asked Montoya to move, Montoya grabbed Steven Johnson's shirt through the front window.
At that point, Johnson said his son Kevin went outside and got in a fight with Montoya, and when Kevin Johnson returned, he had blood on him and said he had stabbed Montoya.
"I didn’t know Kevin was going to do that," said Steven Johnson."Kevin was protecting me…but Kevin didn’t need to go that far. I feel so bad."
Detectives believe the family attacked Montoya after presuming he was the one who banged on their door. But Shauna Montoya said her son would not have bothered the men in the RV. She thinks he was just the first person they saw.
“It was a random, senseless act of unthinkable, brutal violence,” said Montonya.
In a statement to the judge, Johnson spoke before learning his sentence. He did not offer the Montoya family an apology.
”I felt so bad,” Johnson said. I didn’t know what to do. I kept on driving.”
Before issuing the sentence, Amamilo said regardless of what happened, Montoya did not deserve to die.
"Mr. Johnson, you’re still full of excuses and that is not serving you or your children well," said Amamilo.
Shauna Montoya hopes the sons will get longer sentences, especially the one charged in her son’s murder, when they go to trial in July.
“I repeat that scene in my head every day,” Montoya said. “But I don’t want that to be the last memory I have. They’re not going to steal anything else away from us.”