WOODSTOCK — A 58-year-old Windsor man who has been held without bail for three years after he fired a shotgun through the floorboards into the bedroom of his downstairs neighbor before he broke into the neighbor’s apartment while continuing to shoot was sentenced earlier this month.

Adam Perron faces 28 to 35 years in prison, although he could be free in 12 years providing he does not run afoul of his conditions.

Perron pleaded no contest to felony charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and burglary into an occupied dwelling with a deadly weapon, in Windsor County Superior Court on Feb. 12, according to court records.

Under the plea deal, all but 15 years of the total sentence was suspended and Perron received credit for the 1,138 days he has been behind bars.

Perron’s conditions include having no contact with the former neighbors in the future.

A charge of attempted murder in the second degree was dropped.

Despite dropping the attempted murder charge, Windsor County State’s Attorney Ward Goodenough said he was satisfied with the outcome as Perron is locked into a lengthy sentence with severe consequences if he violates probation.

“The sentence structure includes a significant underlying prison sentence,” Goodenough said, noting that the court granted the state’s “upfront 15-years-to-serve” sentence request. The court also rejected the defense’s request to serve six years and for Perron to be allowed to possess “limited weapons solely for the purpose of hunting,” in addition to the prohibition against firearms as standard under violent felony convictions.

“And if he messes up on probation he has another 13 years to 20 years hanging over his head,” Goodenough said.

A 1984 graduate of Windsor High School who earned his living as a truck driver, Perron lived in the second floor apartment with his elderly uncle at a two-story residence owned by his uncle on Route 5 South in Windsor.

In the early morning hours of Jan. 1, 2022, the resident who lived below him said she was awakened by the sounds of breaking glass and “popping,” according to a police affidavit. She also told police she felt “pieces of her ceiling falling on her bed.”

She turned on the light and looked up and saw “bullet holes” in the ceiling and texted her husband, who was at work. While on the phone calling 911, she heard more shots and then saw Perron come through her front door. She ran down the hallway to the sound of “a shotgun blast behind her,” the affidavit said. The woman retreated into a spare bedroom, yelled at Perron that she was on the phone with police and heard more shots.

The woman cried to the 911 operator she was fearing for her life and believed that Perron was trying to kill her, police said.

Eventually she heard Perron leave and go back upstairs to his apartment.

A multi-town police response blocked portions of Route 5 and a few minutes after Windsor police arrived at the scene they found two long guns — a shotgun and and a rifle — in the snow-covered backyard. When Perron did not respond to police calls on a bullhorn to surrender, they broke through his door.

The found him asleep on the couch, according to the affidavit.

Perron’s 81-year-old uncle, who was described as partly deaf and handicapped, was found in his room “very confused,” asking “why (police) were in the apartment,” police said.

Later, Perron waived his right to an attorney before questioning and told police he had been down the road at a friend’s house drinking on New Year’s Eve but blacked out. He said he didn’t remember anything that happened afterward before police entered his apartment and woke him up.

The couple in the downstairs apartment said that Perron had threatened violence and to shoot them on numerous occasions in the preceding years, “but they never thought he would actually do it,” the affidavit reported. They told police they had often heard Perron firing a gun from his balcony.

An investigation of the downstairs apartment concluded that several of Perron’s gunshots had been “near fatal misses.”

Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.