ELKINS — A Randolph County man who fought with two men at a road construction site, and caused one man to experience a brain bleed, in 2024 received a split sentence for two counts of battery.

Jarrod Tyson Kile, 47, of Seneca Rocks, was sentenced by Randolph County Circuit Court Judge Jaymie Wilfong to one year in the regional jail for one count of battery and to three years of supervised probation for a second count of battery. Both sentences will run consecutively. Kile will also have to complete an anger management program and he is required to pay restitution in the form of $500 to both victims.

Kile entered into a plea agreement on Sept. 29, pleading guilty to two counts of battery, a misdemeanor. He was initially indicted in July on two counts of malicious assault, a felony, by the Randolph County Grand Jury.

Before Kile was sentenced, his attorney, James Hawkins Jr., asked the court to sentence Kile to an alternative sentence, such as probation. Hawkins stated that, since his arrest and release on bond, Kile had shown the court that he is a responsible and hardworking man who takes care of his family and who has a “minimal” criminal history.

Hawkins stated that he saw the 2024 incident as, “quite frankly,” a battery, and not malicious assault as Kile had previously been indicted for.

“It was a one day thing. A one situation thing,” Hawkins told the court. “When Mr. Kile went into work that day, (he) wasn’t looking to get into an altercation or a fight. He wasn’t looking to be troublesome or anything of that nature, and it was just the culmination of a disagreement at the worksite that wound up in fisticuffs.”

Hawkins acknowledged that Kile did initiate the fight, but said it was important to note that Kile did not use a weapon, stick or object. He also, however, acknowledged that, even if Kile did not use a weapon, the punches he threw caused “fairly significant injuries” to the two victims.

Kile addressed the court before his sentencing, explaining that he had failed a previous drug test because a coworker had given him some gummies to help him sleep, though Kile said he was not aware that they had illegal substances in them. He also explained that he had also failed an alcohol test because beer helped him sleep.

“I have not been sleeping. This whole situation has been a wear on me,” Kile told the court. “I’m just scared of going to jail and all the whole scenario has really taken a toll on me, and I’d like to just move on. Do whatever I need to do to make it right, you know? I hope I don’t have to go to jail.”

When Wilfong questioned if there had been any prior scuffles before the 2024 incident, Kile said no and told the court that he had learned one of the victims was “really, really” after Kile’s job and had been trying to make him look bad. Kile explained that it all escalated following an argument he had with his ex-wife the night before and following a change in his anxiety prescription.

Kile told the court that, on the day of the incident, he had been trying to show what he had been doing to one of the victims when he started cussing Kile. Kile called both victims “pretty vulgar” people.

“(The first victim) kept on and we was walking up the hill away from it and he kinda got into me and I struck him,” Kile said.

“What do you mean he got into you?” Wilfong asked.

“He kind of shoved up against me,” Kile answered.

Kile continued, saying the other victim ran up and shoved Kile down to the ground while calling him “some bad words.” Kile admitted to hitting the second victim as well. He said the second victim was hit three or four times, while the first victim was hit one or two times.

Assistant Randolph County Prosecutor Richard Shryock told the court that the two victims would describe the 2024 incident “quite differently” than Kile and that there needs to be a “serious punishment.” 

“I don’t think there is any question that (the first victim) had a verbal dispute over work that was being done, and he got his face bashed in,” Shryock told the court. “(The second victim), your honor… he’s a late 40s, early 50s kind of a bumbling, happy-go-lucky guy, who did nothing other than respond to the defendant bashing (the first victim) face in, and got his face bashed in as a result of that… (the second victim) denies any physical contact with (Kile), your honor.”

Shryock said that the second victim suffered a brain bleed, a broken nose, facial bone fractures, orbital fractures and frontal sinus fractures, and had to be life flighted to Morgantown as a result of Kile punching him. The first victim also received serious facial injuries that required maxillofacial surgery.

Shryock said that he has no doubt that Kile was a hard worker or a good provider to his family, even adding that he respected Kile for it, but there was no provocation for either of the attacks on both victims, especially to the second victim who had was just trying to break up the fight.

Shryock asked Wilfong to sentence Kile to a split sentence of one year in incarceration for one battery charge and one year of a suspended sentence with restitution for the victims for the other battery charge.

Hawkins countered that it was extreme to say that both victims had their “face bashed in.”

As she issued Kile’s sentence, Wilfong stated that while Kile’s history and compliance with the court suggested a sentence of probation, she also had to consider the injuries sustained and continued suffering of the two victims.

“I don’t know what the situation was… and I can see how this develops and how it would have looked. I wouldn’t be surprised if you guys were fighting on a jobsite verbally,” Wilfong said. “The one to two punches to (the first victim) after the verbal altercation is the issue, and then the next issue is, (the second victim), trying to break the situation up and he got three or four (punches) in the face.”

Kile, through Hawkins, requested that he be able to self-report to the prison after Christmas. Wilfong denied the request and Kile was detained at the hearing’s conclusion.

According to the criminal complaint, prepared by Deputy J. Wolfe of the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office, at approximately 8 a.m. on August 2, 2024, he was advised of a “victim of a fight” being at Davis Medical Center in Elkins.

The alleged victim told Wolfe that “while working construction at the Mikey Hart Bridge, along U.S. Route 48, in Randolph County, Jarrod Kile was fighting with another employee,” the complaint states. The alleged victim said he stepped in to try to separate the two men, and then Kile began fighting him, as well.

He told Wolfe that Kile and another man “got into an argument. Jarrod hit (the other man) two or three times. I tried to break it up and Jarrod hit me, too.”

The man who was first allegedly struck by Kile told Wolfe, “Jarrod Kile was upset at me for instructing him. He randomly punched me at least four times in the face. I have four broken bones in my face.”