Handing down the sentence, Montgomery County Judge Thomas Branca told Kevin Stillman “I have no idea how you’re alive,” saying the discipline from police and detectives that day was “exceptional.”
In February 2018, Stillman sold two guns to an undercover detective in the parking lot of the Eagle Arms Gun Show at the Expo Center in Oaks, even though the detective told him he wasn’t allowed to possess a gun.
But when detectives went to take him into custody, he pulled a gun and racked a round into the chamber.
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele says not only was Stillman willing to put guns in the hands of a man he thought was a criminal, “This was an individual who was willing to point a gun at police officers. That can’t go on.”
Several detectives testified at his sentencing, one of them saying when he saw the gun he cringed, expecting to be shot. Another detective thought, his dad has recently died and now his family was going to have to go through another funeral.
Steele says officers would have been justified if they had shot Stillman when he pointed the loaded gun at them.
“They seemingly would have been justified in taking the defendant’s life and they did not. They spent a great deal of time trying to talk him down and were able to diffuse the situation," he said.
Stillman’s lawyer asked for leniency, calling Stillman’s actions that day “more suicidal than homicidal.”