WEST CHESTER — What were Nathaniel Lewis’ intentions the night he barricaded himself in his northern Chester County home, began drinking heavily, and ultimately fired almost 40 rounds of high-powered rifle bullets at an emergency team of police that had gathered outside his family’s home?
The answer to that question makes up the dispute between the two sides that are trying the case of Commonwealth vs. Lewis in Common Pleas Court this week, answers that the jury of eight men and four women will be asked to give at its conclusion.
In her opening statement, the lead prosecutor in this, Lewis’ second trial on the charges that stemming from the incidents on Dec. 25, 2018 and dec. 26, 2018, said that his intent could be ascertained from the actions he took when taking up the AR-15 rifle he would use on the barrage against the police outside his home.
“When you take ammunition, and you load it into a magazine, and you take that magazine and put it in a rifle, and you point it at people and you press the trigger over and over, there can me no mistake that your intention is to cause serious bodily injury,” said Chief Deputy District Attorney Michelle Frei, as she gave the jury in Judge Alita Rovito’s courtroom a sketch of the evidence she and Assistant District Attorney William Buckman will give over the course of the week.
“That is what defendant Nathaniel Lewis intended to do,” Frei said. “He fired over 20 rounds at or police officers, our protectors.”
But in response, Assistant Public Defender Stephen Dodd, one of two attorneys representing Lewis, told the panel that they should look beyond what Frei told them in her opening to assess what was really going through his client’s mind that night.
Lewis, a military veteran that Dodd referred to as “Sergeant Lewis” in his remarks, was suffering from depression, going through marital issues with his wife, and “finding himself alone” that day as his extended family celebrated Christmas.
“It drove him to the deepest darkest moment” in his life, Dodd said of Lewis, who sat at the defense table dressed in a dark suit and tie. He wanted to end his life.
Nathaniel Lewis (MNG File Photo)
“This is not the case that the Commonwealth just promised you,” Dodd said. “This isn’t that story at all. For Nathaniel Lewis, this was his real life.”
Still, Dodd conceded that much of the evidence that the prosecution would present is not in dispute. Lewis was in his house that night, going back and forth with his wife and police negotiators, and ultimately fired shots out of the home’s second-story window. And while he is guilty of some of the charges against him, he should be found not guilty of the most serious charges — assault on a police officer and attempted aggravated assault.
This is the second time a jury will be asked to pass judgment on Lewis’ actions. In September 2021, a Common Pleas Court jury delivered a split verdict in the case, in which he is accused of firing his semi-automatic rifle at police and family members during a Christmas Day standoff in 2018 that ended after a negotiator sang “White Christmas” to him over the telephone.
It found Lewis guilty of trying to kill a member of the Chester County Emergency Response Team (ERT) who had been deployed to his home during the incident.
The jurors also found Lewis, a former Army National Guard officer who served in Iraq, guilty of aggravated assault for shooting at the officers, as well as his sister-in-law, who had come to the home he shared with his wife and daughters on Christmas Day to check on his well-being. Lewis had told members of his family that he was having suicidal thoughts, despondent over his wife’s wish for a divorce.
But the panel acquitted Lewis of several counts of attempted first-degree murder involving the majority of the CERT members he shot at outside his home, and for firing his AR-15 at his sister-in-law as she opened the door to his second-floor bedroom.
Lewis, 41, remains in Chester County Prison on $1.5 million bail. He has been in and out of the courtroom since the cold December night during which he sat in the second-floor bedroom of his home on an East Vincent circular street off Seven Stars Road and fired dozens of shots at a police emergency team that had been called to the home after he barricaded himself inside. Earlier, he had fired shots at his sister-in-law as she came to check on him after he failed to attend a family Christmas party.
Rovito, who had inherited the case from another judge, had sentenced him to 28 1/2 to 57 years in state prison.
His conviction was overturned when a state Superior Court judge ruled that the judge who oversaw his 2021 trial had improperly removed his original attorney after allegations of professional misconduct were leveled against her by the prosecution. The judge should have sought other measures to guard against further misbehavior, other than not permitting her to represent Lewis at trial, the court said.
The judge wrote in his March 2023 opinion overturning the conviction that the attorney, Lauren Wimmer of Philadelphia, had “engaged in conduct that offended the trial court’s expectations of the ethical and vigorous advocacy required from a member of the Bar of Pennsylvania.” But he ruled that “the record does not support the trial court’s conclusion that disqualification of Attorney Wimmer was necessary to protect the Commonwealth’s fair trial rights.
To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan, call 610-696-1544.
Originally Published: August 18, 2025 at 12:07 PM EDT
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