Victim’s former wife reacts to Roland Breault verdict

ROCKFORD, Ill. (WTVO) – Dr. Cathy Middleton was hoping the man who fatally stabbed her husband eight years ago inside her Loves Park medical office would remain behind bars.

But, as the verdict was read Wednesday during 60-year-old Roland Breault’s first-degree murder trial, she knew that wasn’t going to be the case.

“The reality is, he’s still a man who killed another person—my husband,” said Middleton, who was with Pendergrass when he died. “And now he gets to live amongst us instead of in a prison.”

A jury found Breault, who’s been in the Winnebago Count Jail since 2016, not guilty of first-degree murder but guilty of involuntary manslaughter for fatally stabbing Middleton’s husband, Dusty Boots Saloon owner Joseph Pendergrass.

“He didn’t’ have a criminal state of mind,” Stephen M. Komie, Breault’s attorney said. “What the jury found him guilty of was having a reckless state of mind by swinging the knife during the fight.”

Because Breault has served more time in jail awaiting trial than the five-year maximum prison sentence for involuntary manslaughter, he was released Wednesday afternoon.

And while he won’t be going to prison, Breault, by law, must still attend a sentencing hearing.

“The judge cannot send him to prison as we note from what you covered in the courtroom,” Komie said. “So he has to be released. He doesn’t have to serve another day. And the sentencing now is perfunctory.”

And while Roland Breault will be released from the county jail this afternoon, he must still meet pre-sentencing conditions. He must not possess a deadly weapon. He must not leave the state, and he is prohibited from contacting members of Joe Pendergrass’s family.

Middleton, who testified for the state, says reliving the day Pendergrass was killed took an emotional toll.

“It was tough being on the stand,” she said. “It was terrible to see the videos.”

Breault and Pendergrass got into a physical altercation on May 31, 2016, inside former Advanced Medical Rehabilitation, a chiropractic and physical therapy clinic that operated on Windsor Road in Loves Park. The beginning of the fight was captured by a surveillance camera. Breault claimed he stabbed Pendergrass in self-defense.

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