Anjol Tajuan Lewis was sentenced to a 15-year Montana Department of Corrections commitment with all time suspended by Judge John Kutzman on March 6.

Lewis entered a guilty plea on a felony count of assault with a weapon causing bodily injury in October in connection with the Nov. 6, 2022 shooting at The Do Bar.

Lewis was 21 and an airman assigned to Malmstrom Air Force Base at the time of the incident.

He was charged in 2022 with felony counts of assault with a weapon (bodily injury); a felony count of assault with a weapon (reasonable apprehension) and a felony count of tampering with or fabricating physical evidence.

Lewis changes plea in Do Bar shooting; awaits sentencing [2025]

In the agreement, the prosecution dismissed the other two charges and did not make a sentencing e signed a plea agreement.

During the March 6 hearing, Ryan Ball, the Cascade County deputy attorney prosecuting the case, said the victim of the shooting didn’t want to testify or participate in the case, which is why the plea agreement was negotiated the way it was.

In 2022, the Great Falls Police Department responded to The Do Bar just after midnight on Nov. 6 for a report of a male with a gunshot wound to the chest, according to court documents.

Lewis signs plea deal in 2022 Do Bar shooting [2025]

Bar staff directed officers inside the breezeway at the front door where a shirtless man was lying on the floor.

Officers observed two holes on the victim’s left tricep that appeared to be consistent with a through and through bullet wound, as well as a large hole in his chest, according to court documents.

During the investigation, GFPD officers reviewed The Do Bar’s security footage and saw Lewis along with a man identified as Elijah Dwumfour entering the bar. The victim and another man were already inside and through interviews, officers learned that the victim’s friend had a conversation with Lewis and Dwumfour that led to an altercation in the parking lot, according to court documents.

During the altercation, Lewis was observed jogging to his vehicle, while the other three men were fighting. Bar security was seen breaking up the altercation and it appeared that Lewis was attempting to help break up the fight when Dwumfour punched the victim and the victim’s friend punches Lewis, who then brandished a firearm and fired two rounds that hit the victim, then a third round that missed the victim’s friend, according to court documents.

GFPD officers located shell casings in the parking lot and one in the outer wall of the bar. During a search, officers found a firearm in Lewis’ vehicle, according to court documents.

Lewis was identified as a member of the U.S. Air Force assigned to Malmstrom Air Force Base and the AF Office of Special Investigations determined he had deleted text messages pertaining to the incident from his phone before he turned it over to investigators, according to court documents.

Dwumfour was not a military member but a dependent at the time, according to the county attorney’s office.

Lewis’s defense attorney, Kelli Cummings, asked for a six year deferred imposition of his sentence since he didn’t have a criminal history before this conviction.

She said she’d never had a client with so much support and so many people batting for him and offering resources.

Airman charged for shooting at The Do Bar [2022]

Cummings said that Lewis would be the first to say he wished the Nov. 6, 2022 incident at the Do Bar hadn’t happened, but had made his court appointments and has a one-year-old son.

She said he had two pending cases in Pennsylvania, where he’s been living, and she talked to his defense attorney there, where they’re trying to get him into veterans treatment court.

Ball, the prosecutor, said that the victim’s unwillingness to testify at sentencing didn’t mean he wasn’t affected.

“He almost died,” Ball said, after being shot in the chest and a bullet pierced his spleen, pancreas, stomach and penetrated his liver.

There was “no reason for a gun,” in the Do Bar altercation, he said, and shooting in the parking lot, one shot toward the bar, was “extremely dangerous.”

The victim is on probation on a criminal endangerment charge in Missoula, according to the prosecution and his probation officer. According to the court, the victim was on probation at the time of the incident, working as a bouncer at the Do Bar.

GFPD investigating Nov. 6 shooting at The Do Bar [2022]

Ball said Lewis was allowed to return to Pittsburgh, where he picked up two new criminal cases, both of which involved firearms, as recently as January 2025, while he was supposed to remain law abiding while the Do Bar case was pending.

Cummings said that they’ll establish an interstate compact to ensure safeguards and updates should Lewis violate his probation.

She said he has achievement certificates and a PTSD diagnosis from his military service and that the Do Bar fight was racially motivated in his eyes, with a person known to have a history of getting in fights.

“It was not a pleasant experience” for Lewis or the friend he was with, she said. “We’re not up here arguing that he made the right decision to bring a gun into it.”

She said he had a good plan and support system in place and was confident he wouldn’t be back in Kutzman’s court.

Speaking in court, Lewis said he was in security forces and also performed missile security missions.

Lewis said when they went into the Do Bar, he felt the tension and wanted to leave. As they were leaving, he said the victim of the shooting was waiting outside, yelling at them.

Lewis said people were threatening his friend, which is what made him retrieve his weapon from his vehicle.

He got punched in the face during the altercation, which caused him to be dazed and seeing double, Lewis said.

Lewis told Kutzman that he’d been deployed to Kuwait shortly before the incident, which triggered him.

Choking up in court, he said, “I don’t want to shoot this man, I didn’t want to harm no one.”

In issuing the sentence, Kutzman said, that he’d pled guilty to the assault with a weapon charge.

He said that Lewis and his friend left the bar and were followed by other into the parking lot.

Kutzman said Lewis had said he knew enough about those people to fear serious injury, so he retrieved his weapon.

Kutzman said probation and parole indicated Lewis was a low risk to reoffend. He said Cummings’ sentencing memo and the witness who spoke to Lewis’ character was impressive.

“You’re working hard,” Kutzman said, and it appeared to him that Lewis was trying to deal with his issues in a positive way.

Kutzman said that the factual circumstances of the case were complicated and the victim “was not a fine upstanding law abiding citizen, but you shot him, that’s a big problem.”

He said his attorney’s request for a deferred imposition of sentence wasn’t unreasonable, but not appropriate in this case since Lewis shot someone.

Instead, Kutzman said he was giving a long suspended sentence, which includes probation conditions.

The law limits lengths of suspended sentences, but it’s up to 15 years on a violent offense, he said.

During the Oct. 16 change of plea hearing, Lewis said he discharged a firearm at a person, with the bullet striking him and causing injury.

Kutzman said he wanted more information from Lewis during the hearing and to know whether self defense applied in this case.

Sam Harris, Lewis’ defense attorney at the time, said that he didn’t believe self defense applied in this case but asked Lewis questions to establish a more detailed factual record for the court.

Lewis said that there had been a fight between his friend and others at the bar and that he was trying to break it up when he was struck.

Lewis said that he wasn’t close to the other people involved when he fired the gun at them.

Lewis fired another round at another person involved who was backing away, but didn’t hit him with a bullet, according to his testimony during the Oct. 16 hearing.

Kutzman said sometimes in situations like this, the person who shoots might have a self defense argument and he wanted to be sure Lewis understood he was giving up his right to ask a jury to consider that at trial.

In accepting Lewis’ plea, Kutzman said that he was satisfied Lewis understood he was taking the plea as part of a strategy to control his risk of a worse outcome should a jury find him guilty on the multiple counts he was facing.

Since the prosecution isn’t making a sentencing recommendation, Kutzman said that could be an advantage for Lewis as only his defense attorney would be making such recommendations to the court.