WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — A 67-year-old armed Wilder man who threatened to shoot police when they responded to a call of domestic assault has pleaded guilty, barely five weeks after he engaged police in a standoff and threatened he would would only come out of his home in a “body bag.”

John Beane pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of domestic assault and has been sentenced to four months in state prison, according to court records. He also faces an additional six months to 18 months behind bars if he violates any of his special conditions.

Beane, who was residing at the Stony Brook condominium complex with family members on Route 5 in Wilder, has been confined at Southern State Correctional Facility where he had been held without bail since late last month, Department of Corrections records show.

The plea and conviction — a process that typically can take a year or longer to go through Vermont’s court system — represents an unusually speedy conclusion.

An initial felony charge against Beane of aggravated domestic assault in the first degree, which comes with a potential penalty of up to 15 years in prison and a $25,000 charge, was knocked down to a misdemeanor charge of domestic assault, which carries a maximum penalty of 18 months and $5,000.

Both the Windsor County prosecutors office and Beane’s court-appointed attorney declined to comment.

Beane was accused of physically assaulting a 66-year-old woman when she told him information that “agitated him” and lacerating the hand of a 91-year-old woman with a “wooden dowel” when she came to the first woman’s defense, according court documents.

When Hartford police responded at the scene to investigate, Beane threatened to shoot them and set his home on fire, at one point telling a family member that “the only way he would come out is in a body bag,” a police affidavit said.

The dire warnings led Hartford police to secure a perimeter around the Stony Brook residential complex in a six-hour standoff until negotiators were satisfied they had established a rapport with Beane and determined the public was not in danger, police told the Valley News at the time.

But police were called back to Beane’s home the next day after a relative alerted them that Beane was “semi-conscious” and “possibly comatose in an attempt to commit suicide” and in need of medical help. When they got to Beane’s condo they found he had barricaded himself inside his bedroom. They made a forced entry and stabilized him.

Special conditions ordered by the court that Beane must obey in order not to risk imposition of additional prison time include submitting to a mental health screening, not having any contact with the victims he assaulted and not possessing firearms or other “deadly weapons,” according to court documents.

Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.