Plea is entered in assault case

SANDPOINT — A Bonner County man accused of firing a pistol toward a woman during a domestic dispute is scheduled to be sentenced in November.

Raymond Wayne Gamboa entered an Alford plea to a felony charge of aggravated assault in 1st District Court on Tuesday. Under such a plea, Gamboa admits not wrongdoing but concedes he could be convicted at trial.

The plea will be treated no differently than a regular plea of guilt when he’s sentenced on Nov. 4.

Gamboa, 50, is accused of firing the direction of the woman in June. The woman was not injured. Three days after the incident, a Hope home Gamboa was renting caught fire.

Bonner County sheriff’s investigators concluded the fire was an act of arson and arrested a Clark Fork man with ties to the couple. The charge, however, was dismissed at a preliminary hearing because there was insufficient evidence that Lawrence Wayne Cross Jr. set the fire.

Gamboa was being held at the Bonner County Jail and was not a suspect in the arson. The home was damaged, but not irreparably so.

Gamboa faces up to two and a half years in prison, although a plea agreement in his case recommends credit for time served and no additional jail time. In exchange for the plea, the state dismissed a persistent violator enhancement that would have resulted in a prison term of five years to life.