World Photo by Lou Sennick The day before Monte B. Callaway was to go on trial for a Bandon shooting in February, he pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree assault before Circuit Court Martin Stone on Monday. He stands before the judge with his court-appointed attorney Ron Cox.

COQUILLE �” It was apparently a father’s compassion for his daughter that led Monte Callaway to forgo a trial and plead guilty to shooting a Bandon bartender.

The Bandon man had previously spurned plea bargain offers and was scheduled to go to trial today. But it seemed Callaway changed his mind after a doctor said his teenage daughter would have a difficult time taking the stand to testify, according to Coos County District Attorney R. Paul Frasier.

Frasier spoke with several witnesses over the weekend in preparation for the trial. They exhibited symptoms of post-traumatic stress, he said, tearing up, crying and asking not to have to take the stand. Their reactions were more severe than some murder witnesses he’d had to interview for previous cases, Frasier said.

“The witnesses were clearly traumatized by what they saw,” he said. “It was a pretty graphic scene.”

Callaway had arrived at Lloyd’s of Bandon on a Thursday in February in an anguished state. Frasier explained that Callaway and his wife, Susan Callaway, had separated the previous September. Although Monte Callaway was willing to reunite, his wife wanted a divorce, Frasier said.

On Feb. 21, he called her and said he had the divorce paperwork. He wanted to know if he could stop by Lloyd’s, where she worked as a waitress, to get her signature.

Complicating matters, Frasier said Callaway believed his wife was having an affair with Paul Conner, a bartender at Lloyd’s.

He arrived at the bar with a 12-gauge shotgun filled with bird shot. He fired a blast at Conner, hitting him in the head.

“Then Mr. Callaway approached his wife, and said ‘Here’s your f’ing divorce.’ Then he put the shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger,” Frasier said.

Both men were taken to the hospital, Callaway being the more seriously injured. He remained hospitalized for about a month and required several surgeries to repair the damage to his face.

Conner spent less than 24 hours in the hospital suffered some hearing loss as a result of the shooting and still has some pellets in his skin, Frasier said.

Callaway’s attorney Ron Cox delayed court proceedings several times as he sought mental evaluations for his client.

At Monday’s hearing, Cox said three psychologists examined the defendant and found no reason to believe Callaway wasn’t aware of his actions the night of the shooting.

“We don’t have a medical defect issue to present,” Cox said.

He said Callaway had been prescribed Haldol, an antipsychotic, a number of years ago, which he eventually stopped using because of painful side-effects. He drank alcohol, Cox said, until marital problems led him to give up drinking, which left him his construction work to help him keep his mind off problems.

“When his business started to slide away, that route went away as well,” Cox said.

Cox agreed with Frasier’s assertion that Callaway decided to plead guilty so as not to traumatize his family members who would have to take the stand.

Frasier said Callaway’s daughter was the last to see him before he went to the tavern and would have been an important witness. He said he was glad to avoid a trial so as not to put her, or the other witnesses, in an uncomfortable position.

In addition to Conner and Susan Callaway, a second waitress and a customer were at Lloyd’s when Monte Callaway arrived with his shotgun. Frasier said the pellets in the first shot that didn’t hit Conner went down the end of the bar, toward the two waitresses. The customer was near the bar, Frasier said, and told the DA that he could feel the blast of the shotgun blow by his head.

Callaway was indicted on seven counts, including attempted murder, first-degree assault, second-degree assault, unlawful use of a weapon and three counts of recklessly endangering another.

He pleaded guilty only to the second charge, first-degree assault, as part of the plea agreement with the DA’s office. The DA dismissed the other charges.

Judge Martin Stone sentenced Callaway to seven years and six months in state prison, the minimum sentence imposed by Measure 11.�  He also will have to undergo three years of post-prison supervision, pay $1,807 in attorney fees and court costs, and forfeit his shotgun. Callaway received a five-year sentence for using a firearm in the assault, though it will be served concurrently with the other sentence.

The judge noted that if Callaway is convicted of another crime involving a firearm, he will face a minimum 10-year sentence.

Stone emphasized this point at the sentencing hearing.

“If it happens again, you’re in big trouble,” he said.

“It won’t happen again,” Callaway said, one of the few comments he made during the proceedings.

Conner didn’t attend the hearing, and neither did his wife, Kim Conner.

“We were happy just to get this behind us,” she said this morning.

She said her husband never returned to his job at Lloyd’s after the incident and instead works as a cashier at Price ’n’ Pride.

“He doesn’t wish to return to bartending after that,” she said.