Teller man sentenced to 20 years in prison for stabbing assault

By Diana Haecker |

The life of Gregory Saclamana changed forever on October 4, 2020, when he was stabbed more than 50 times by his partner Bradley Gene Okpealuk, in Teller. Okpealuk continued to cut into Saclamana, who laid in a pool of his own blood in the kitchen, afraid to make any noise, Saclamana remembers. This agony was what Charlene Saclamana, the victim’s mother, tried to relay to Judge Eric Aarseth, who sentenced 35-year-old Okpealuk to a 20-year prison term last Friday in Nome’s courthouse.
According to court documents, troopers in Nome were notified on October 4, 2020 at 5:30 a.m. of a stabbing in Teller. The community’s VPSO responded to the home of Bradley Okpealuk, who let the officer inside. Okpealuk appeared intoxicated and the officer saw Gregory Saclamana on the kitchen floor, conscious and saying he was in need of medical attention. The VPSO ran to fetch a health aide, and both transported Saclamana to the village clinic. He was bleeding from many stab wounds to his chest, abdomen and legs. The VPSO described a large amount of blood on the kitchen floor and found two knives in the blood pool. One knife’s blade had broken off at the handle. At the clinic, the court document says, Saclamana said that Okpealuk, his fiancé, had stabbed him for unknown reasons.
Saclamana was medivaced to Anchorage and, according to his mother, his heart stopped for a short time when he arrived at the hospital and CPR was performed to resuscitate him.
At Friday’s sentencing, she shared with the judge the severity of her son’s physical injuries and the post-traumatic stress leaving scars not only on his body but also his psyche. She said that Gregory has had over 16 surgeries so far. He has lost six inches of his intestine, has only a third of his pancreas left and he no longer has his spleen or gallbladder. “What has happened to him has just forever changed him,” she said.
However, the sentence did not bring full closure to the Saclamanas.
Both Charlene and Gregory felt frustrated by the judicial system when despite of a conflict of interest, and withholding information on this conflict, the Public Defender’s Office continued to defend the accused.  Prosecuting Assistant District Attorney Ashly Crockett shared the frustration as the state was ready to go to trial since 2023, but the first defense attorney quit, and the next Public Defender on the eve of the scheduled trial a year later declared the long-known conflict of interest. When a third lawyer then represented Okpealuk, Crockett said, the parties came to a plea agreement in April of this year.
A grand jury in February 2021 indicted Okpealuk on two charges: attempted murder in the first degree and assault in the first degree. But following the plea deal, the attempted murder charge was dropped and Okpealuk, who had prior assault charges, pleaded guilty to one count of assault in the first degree.
Crockett explained that Okpealuk agreed to accept a 20-year prison sentence. “If the defendant went to trial and was convicted on both counts, he could have been sentenced to somewhere between seven years and 99 years,” she said. However, Crockett explained, proving an attempted murder charge requires the state to establish an “intentional” mental state, not just a reckless mental state. “The state would have had to prove at trial that even though the defendant was blackout drunk that he formed the intentional mental state to commit the crime,” Crockett said. She said there was a chance that he would get convicted of one or both crimes or that a jury wasn’t convinced, resulting in a hung jury or no conviction. Crockett explained that even though the defendant's sentencing range was just seven to 11 years on the assault in the first degree, he agreed to get the maximum sentence that is allowed on the assault in the first degree, which is 20 years in jail.
The Saclamanas were dismayed about the plea deal with Okpealuk. “It really wasn't the way that I was hoping that the state would offer the case because I wanted to go to trial,” said Gregory Saclamana in a phone interview with the Nugget.
“I feel like the system has let me down. It has let Gregory down in such a huge way,” Charlene Saclamana said. “I feel so strongly that the district attorney's office needs to remember that they represent the victims and not their own interests when they decide to make a plea deal with the other attorney. The victim should also be involved in that.”
Crockett agrees that the crime was a very brutal one but said the victim had been involved and was also represented by an attorney from the Office of Victim’s Rights. “My office takes domestic violence cases extremely seriously,” she said. “We are making sure that victims' voices are heard and that domestic violence abusers are held accountable. I think that this is a very serious case, and that this is a very strong resolution of this case based on the issues that would have been presented at trial, and that a 20-year sentence is a very strong sentence for this type of charge.”
Okpealuk had been in custody since the crime was committed in 2020. The five years he had spent in jail will be counted toward his sentence and he will serve the remaining 15 years in prison, with a possibility of parole.