checking the local paper (morgan county Tn) after laffing at this joke ran across this. started laffing again .
Morgan County News
A Lancing man has been found guilty of aggravated assault in a stabbing incident that happened in 2008 just south of Wartburg.
Roger Houpt was tried before Judge Eugene Eblen in Morgan County Criminal Court on Thursday.
Houpt was accused of stabbing a man during an altercation on Highway 27 near its intersection with Raines Road somewhere around midnight on Aug. 15.
Houpt claimed two men passing him and a friend in a car shouted at them from their vehicle and stopped and came back on them. “They bum-rushed us,” Houpt claimed.
The men in the vehicle, Wesley Duncan and Terry Stevens, testified that Houpt and his companion, Donnie Bryant, were walking in the highway, trying to wave down traffic and appeared to be drunk.
Investigator Gary Seiber said Houpt and Bryant are believed to have thrown a can of beer at the car and it hit the windshield. Duncan and Stevens stopped to avoid hitting them and even offered them a ride. They claimed it was Bryant and Houpt who rushed them.
Houpt is disabled and has a prosthetic leg. During the altercation his prosthetic leg came off, but he managed to stab Duncan.
“He (Duncan) had a ruptured lung and was in the hospital for about seven days. It was very serious,” Seiber explained.
Houpt said he and Bryant had been at a party on Red Kap Road earlier in the night, but left when some of the attendees began to take pills.
Houpt testified that he doesn’t “do pills” and denied being intoxicated.
Seiber said Duncan and Stevens notified Mike Rayder, who used to work at the Morgan County Sheriff’s Office, and Rayder then notified law enforcement. Seiber was on call and responded.
Seiber was a couple days into the investigation when he interviewed Houpt.
*“It was actually his prosthetic leg that led me to him,”* Seiber said.
Seiber said he talked to various people until he found someone who matched the description Duncan and Stevens gave him.
“Until this I hadn’t heard of Roger Houpt and didn’t know him,” Seiber said.
Houpt claimed self-defense in the incident but the jury found him guilty on the most serious count of aggravated assault.
Both Seiber and Assistant District Attorney Frank Harvey, who prosecuted, said they are pleased with the jury’s decision.
Houpt is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 20.
