Chase sheriff was at bar fight
Staff writer
A Marion man and a Hillsboro man arrested in relation to a Dec. 8 fight at a Cottonwood Falls saloon are facing Chase County charges over an incident at which the Chase County sheriff was present.
Sheriff Jacob Welsh was at the Bulldog Saloon when a fight broke out between three men.
“I was just a normal person, not on duty at the time,” Welsh said.
In an affidavit filed along with aggravated battery and obstruction of apprehension charges filed Dec. 12 against Michael W. Sigel, 52, Marion, deputy Colton Carpenter wrote that Welsh pulled a man he later learned was Sigel off of victim Larry Pinkston at the Doghouse Saloon. Pinkston was taken by ambulance to Newman Regional Health hospital in Emporia.
The obstruction charge stems from Sigel allegedly leaving the bar along with Chasen C. Gann, 38, Hillsboro.
Gann also was charged Dec. 12 in Chase County with aggravated battery and interference with law enforcement.
According to an affidavit filed in Sigel’s case, Chase County deputies arrived while Pinkston was in the back of an ambulance covering his eye, which was blackened and swollen shut. His face was bloody from lacerations. His mouth was full of blood.
Pinkston told Carpenter that he was leaving a restroom when he and a man in a black cowboy hat with a beard and brown eyes met in the doorway.
Pinkston told the deputy he said, “Excuse me” in German, walked past the man and returned to the bar. Then the black-hatted man approached and punched him in the face and punched him after he fell to the floor.
Gann was arrested the day after the fight after he turned himself in to Marion County Sheriff’s Office and admitted to punching Pinkston in the face.
Gann told the deputy he left the scene with Sigel and Jarrod W. Williams, 37.