Nicholas Ray Peterson
(DOC file photo)
By Patti Weaver
(Stillwater, Okla.) — A Stillwater man, who admitted using a ball hitch receiver to threaten to shatter a window in a car with his wife and her children in it at a grade school parking lot, has been given a four-year prison term for domestic assault with a dangerous weapon.
Nicholas Ray Peterson, 36, who is 6’6″ and weighs 190 pounds, was given two concurrent three-year prison terms for strangling his wife in 2021 on Feb. 18 and Sept. 14, along with a concurrent one-year jail term for violating an emergency protective order in 2021 on Oct. 1 that she obtained against him.
Peterson, who admitted he was guilty of all of his charges, was sentenced last week in accordance with a plea agreement with the prosecution that was approved in court by Payne County Associate District Judge Michael Kulling.
When Peterson finishes his prison term, he must serve six years of probation, take a 52-week batterer’s intervention course and pay various costs including a $960 prosecution fee, the judge ordered last week.
His wife said she had arrived at the elementary school on Sept. 15, 2021, “when Nicholas arrived in his vehicle and blocked the drive in a way that she was unable to leave. She said that she locked the vehicle with her children and her inside. She said that Nicholas became enraged at this and kept striking the vehicle and yelling at her to get out so they could talk,” Stillwater Police Officer Ricardo J. Inciarte wrote in an affidavit.
A school employee “witnessed this event and called (her) to let her know to stay in the vehicle and that she had contacted the police department. (His wife) said that Nicholas went to his truck and got a ball hitch receiver and went back to (her) vehicle and started screaming at her that he was going to shatter the window with it to get her out of the vehicle. She said that once Nicholas heard the police sirens he left in his vehicle,” the affidavit said.
The officer asked Peterson’s wife “if Nicholas had any weapons, and she told me that she had both of their firearms in the vehicle with her,” according to Inciarte’s affidavit.
The school employee said she would help the woman and her children “find safe placement if Wings of Hope was unable to,” the affidavit said.
