A man charged with attempted murder for trying to hit another man with his car last year in Baker City pleaded guilty on Thursday, Aug. 31 to attempted first-degree assault and was sentenced to three years of probation and required to enroll in drug and alcohol treatment.

Brian Kidd Kallio, 26, who was arrested on Nov. 5, 2022, and had been in the Baker County Jail since then, could be sentenced to 40 months in state prison if he fails to complete probation requirements, Baker County District Attorney Greg Baxter said.

Kallio admitted in a written plea agreement that he tried to “cause physical injury to Robert Goodwin by means of a vehicle, a dangerous weapon.”

Kallio also pleaded guilty to driving under the influence of intoxicants for the same incident. He was sentenced to one year of probation and fined $1,000 for that conviction. His driver’s license was suspended for one year.

Baxter said the plea agreement with Kallio, which dismissed the attempted murder charge, was based on Baxter’s uncertainty about a trial, during which the victim, Robert Michael Goodwin, 35, would have been a key witness.

Baxter said on Friday, Sept. 1 that he was “uncertain whether the victim would have testified in a manner to get an attempted murder conviction.”

Michael Spaulding, the chief deputy in the district attorney’s office, prosecuted the case.

Baxter said Kallio’s attorney, Jody S. Vaughan of Pendleton, raised questions, based on evidence at the scene, about how close Kallio’s car came to hitting Goodwin.

According to police records, Goodwin told police that the car missed him by about 2 feet.

Vaughan said on Friday, Sept. 1 that Goodwin told the grand jury that heard the case that he is legally blind. Vaughan also said the turning radius of Kallio’s car makes it unlikely that he could come close to hitting a person who had just gotten out of the car and was standing right beside it, as Goodwin said he did during the incident.

Vaughan also pointed out that the incident happened after dusk.

Considering Kallio’s drug use and intoxication at the time — which he admitted in pleading guilty to DUII — Vaughan said it is unreasonable to contend that Kallio was capable of actually intending to kill Goodwin with his car, which a jury would have to conclude to convict Kallio of attempted murder.

Had Kallio been convicted of attempted murder, he could have been sentenced to nine years in prison, Vaughan said. The sentence of probation for the attempted assault conviction, with no additional jail or prison time beyond what he has served, reflects Kallio’s lack of a criminal record, she said. She noted that he has been in the Baker County Jail for almost 10 months.

Baxter said Goodwin and Kallio had met several days before the Nov. 5, 2022, incident, and that they had been living in Kallio’s 2003 Nissan Maxima.

Baxter and Vaughan both said that Kallio and Goodwin had been using methamphetamine and marijuana for several days prior to the incident.

Police responded to a report of a car crash the evening of Nov. 5, 2022, at Settler’s Loop, the street that connects 17th Street and Pocahontas Road and runs through the Elkhorn View Industrial Park in northwest Baker City.

Baker City Police officer William Mercado found Kallio’s car in the irrigation ditch that runs beside Settler’s Loop. Goodwin told Mercado that Kallio had first threatened to kill him, then driven toward him, missing but ending up in the ditch.