A 38-year-old man who savagely beat his girlfriend in a travel trailer parked in a Greenbank woods Jan. 23 was recently sent to prison for three years.

Kevin Porter, a former Oak Harbor resident, pleaded guilty in Island County Superior Court Jan. 28 to second-degree assault, domestic violence with an aggravating circumstance of deliberate cruelty.

Porter was highly intoxicated when he came home to the travel trailer and started beating his 51-year-old girlfriend. She suffered a cracked vertebra and life-threatening hemorrhaging in the space between her brain and the tissue that surrounds it.

After he was arrested, Porter expressed great remorse about what he did. He declined to have an attorney and insisted on pleading guilty. Island County Prosecutor Greg Banks offered him a plea bargain in which the first-degree assault charge was dismissed, but Porter agreed to a sentence above the standard range.

On Feb. 8, Island County Superior Court Judge Alan Hancock agreed with Banks’ recommendation that Porter serve three years in prison.

The assault made regional news because Island County Deputy Robert Mirabal was credited with possibly saving the victim’s life in his last week of work. Mirabal was laid off due to budget cuts in the county.

Mirabal was patrolling on Highway 525 in Greenbank and saw the woman walking on the side of the road. He stopped to speak with her and persuaded her to go to the hospital.