Bend business owner questions ‘lenient’ charges in incident

A Bend businesswoman said Monday a transient man locked her and two other women inside her tattoo shop over the weekend. After that frightening experience, she said she feels as though justice is not being done.

Angela Kephart, the owner and operator of Mum’s Tattoo Studio on NW Greenwood Avenue, said she believes the suspect is not being charged harshly enough.

Security footage from the Saturday night incident shows a man identified Stanley Layton Phillips, 32, walk into the shop. Kephart said he’d been in the studio earlier, asking for a face tattoo. When she told him the studio doesn’t do face tattoos, Kephart said Phillips got angry. She kicked him out and told him to never come back.

Hours later, Kephart said, he came back. She said he walked in and started cursing and yelling threats to her and the other two women inside, one of whom was a client.

Then, she said, he locked the door.

In cellphone video, you can hear Kephart asking Phillips to leave. He replies, “What, are you scared? You want to fight about it? Let’s do it.”

Kephart called 911 and while they waited for police to arrive, she and an employee grabbed their guns and the client grabbed her knife. She said they were ready to defend themselves if needed.

Before first responders arrived, the women escaped out a back door.

Phillips was arraigned Monday in Deschutes County Circuit Court. He’s charged with second-degree burglary with the intent to commit the crimes of second-degree disorderly conduct, harassment and menacing.

But Kephart said she thinks he deserves harsher punishment. She even went to court to make her case before the judge.

Kephart argued that Phillips held them hostage.

“I don’t think those charges are extreme enough at all, for the type of fear and locking us into the actual shop and coming at us,” she said. “Who knows what he could do to my shop? What he could do to anything else? I think he deserves a lot longer in jail than he’s getting.”

In the meantime, though, Kephart said she and other business owners are still worried about safety in their area. There’s a drug and alcohol treatment center next door. She said Pfiefer & Associates attracts dangerous people she wants the center to add more security so incidents such as this don’t happen.

NewsChannel 21 asked the treatment center for comment, but has not yet heard back. We also asked police for comment about the claim the initial charges were lenient and did not receive an answer Monday.

Phillips is due back in court next week. He remained held late Monday at the Deschutes County Jail on $15,000 bail.