Stalans pleads guilty in officer’s death

It wasn’t the word “guilty” — spoken Monday by the man who fatally shot her husband — that drove Britteni Moats to her knees.

It was, instead, the words she was forced to say eight months ago to her three children upon learning Brian Keith Stalans had fatally shot their father, Maryville Police Department Officer Kenny Moats.

“It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life is look into their eyes and tell them their daddy wouldn’t be coming home again,” the slain officer’s widow said in a statement she asked to be read aloud Monday in Blount County Circuit Court because she remains too shattered to speak publicly.

Stalans, 44, an alcoholic veteran with a history of mental illness, pleaded guilty Monday before Judge Tammy Harrington in the Aug. 25, 2016, shooting death of Moats, 32; the attempted murder of Blount County Sheriff’s Office Deputy David Mendez and his own father; and the aggravated assault of his girlfriend.

As part of a plea deal brokered between Blount County District Attorney General Mike Flynn and Blount County Public Defender Mack Garner, Stalans was sentenced to life without parole for the first-degree murder of Moats and an extra 56 years for the crimes against Mendez, his father and girlfriend.

It is extraordinary for an accused killer to accept a deal ensuring he will die behind bars, but Garner said the state’s proof of premeditation was strong and a death sentence by a jury almost certain.

“There’s no question with the note [vowing to kill his father and law enforcers] he left and the things he said to his girlfriend it was premeditated,” Garner said. “You’re risking being executed when [even with life with parole] there’s no chance of you getting out.”

On the day of the fatal shooting, Stalans bought hollow-point bullets for a .45-caliber handgun, Flynn said. He confronted Partridge at her Alcoa home, telling her he planned to kill his father, Ken Stalans, and any police officers he encountered. When she ran into her home to protect their toddler son, who was inside, Brian Stalans opened fire on the house. He was drunk, angry and suicidal.

She frantically tried to warn Stalans’ father and alert authorities. When he showed up at his father’s house, his father, too, alerted authorities.

Moats and Mendez, both members of the 5th Judicial Drug Task Force, were in the area of the 3111 Kerrway Lane home Stalans shared with his father when the father’s call for help was received by dispatchers. Father and son had already had an altercation that day, but the father declined to press charges.