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By Mike Allen | The Roanoke Times

The man convicted of attacking an off-duty Roanoke police officer and leaving him paralyzed will spend 15 years in prison.

A Roanoke Circuit Court judge this morning sentenced 18-year-old William Steele Jr. to life in prison, suspended after he serves 15 years. Once Steele is released, he will remain on probation essentially for the rest of his life.

Steele was convicted last month of aggravated malicious wounding in the attack that broke Bryan Lawrence’s neck, injured his spinal cord and left him permanently disabled.

Lawrence has testified that the night of May 10, as he was working off-duty in full uniform at Berglund Chevrolet on Williamson Road, he heard a call about an assault on a woman at the nearby Go Mart. He went looking for the suspect, a man in an orange-and-white striped shirt, and found Dantonio Foster Sr., who matched the description and was walking along Huntington Boulevard Northwest with Steele.

Foster let Lawrence see his identification. When word came back on Lawrence's police radio that Foster was the suspect, Foster ran. Lawrence radioed in "Foot pursuit!" and gave chase. Foster tripped and Lawrence caught up with him, pinning him to the ground and grabbing his arm to cuff him. That's when Steele attacked him.

At his trial, Steele took the stand in his own defense, saying that he had wanted to help Foster but that he never intended to do lasting harm to Lawrence. He said that when he kicked at Lawrence, he wasn't aiming for the officer's head, and he insisted the kick was more of a "push."