Alaska News

Kodiak man gets 30 months in jail for assault at Coast Guard base

A 51-year-old man was sentenced in federal court Wednesday to 30 months in prison for assaulting a man on the U.S. Coast Guard base in Kodiak, according to the U.S. attorney's office.

Michael Ensley of Kodiak pleaded guilty on June 1 to a charge of assault resulting in serious bodily injury. A federal judge also ordered Ensley to pay more than $28,000 to the victims of the assault, the U.S. attorney's office said in a statement.

According to a sentencing memorandum filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Bryan Schroder, Ensley entered the Coast Guard base illegally on Feb. 16, 2015, and walked to the commissary, where he "attacked a man he thought was having an affair with his wife."

"The defendant did not bother to identify the right man, grabbing the victim by the throat and immediately knocking him unconscious," Schroder wrote in the memorandum.

Ensley continued to beat the man until another person intervened. The man suffered facial fractures that required multiple surgeries, he wrote.

The sentencing memorandum filed by defense attorney Darrel Gardner opened by quoting two plays, including "Othello." "O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on," he wrote.

The memorandum said Ensley, who lived in Kodiak for about 27 years, was "truly sorry about what happened."

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"He went to the base to talk with the person he thought was having an affair with his wife, which in retrospect was a very bad idea on his part," Gardner wrote. "However, he did not go there with the intent of assaulting anyone."

Gardner wrote that Ensley had "experienced a burst of rage" and at the time of the assault, "was near a breaking point mentally and emotionally." He regretted the injuries he caused the man, Gardner wrote.

Ensley was in custody Wednesday at the Anchorage jail.

Tegan Hanlon

Tegan Hanlon was a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News between 2013 and 2019. She now reports for Alaska Public Media.

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