A vicious New Year’s Eve 2011 scuffle with a police officer in a Roanoke parking lot brought Allen Lee Godfrey Sr. a seven-year prison sentence, on charges of assault and battery of a law enforcement officer, for trying to take his gun, and for vehicle larceny.

This week, the 37-year-old Roanoke man learned his convictions in that fight will cost him almost a dozen more years in time against him that had been suspended .

On Thursday in Franklin County Circuit Court, Judge William Alexander ruled that Godfrey’s Roanoke offenses violated his probation on a series of 2006 felony convictions — for breaking and entering, grand larceny and felony eluding — and ordered him to serve an additional 11 years and seven months.

“You have a horrible record,” Alexander told Godfrey at the hearing, adding that since his release from serving about five years on the Franklin County charges, Godfrey had “done exactly the same type of thing again.”

Godfrey was arrested most recently late on Dec. 31, 2011, in the parking lot of a northeast Roanoke Kroger store.

Security camera footage presented at his plea hearing in Roanoke showed Godfrey sitting in a parked pickup truck, approached by Roanoke police Officer D.R. Faulkner .

After they spoke for a few moments, the truck started to drive off and Faulkner pulled Godfrey out of the vehicle, at which point they began to fight. In the video, Faulkner loses his footing and falls, and Godfrey dives on top of him.

Faulkner testified that Godfrey tried to bite his fingers as they struggled, and he said the man was attempting to take his sidearm from its holster when bystanders jumped in, pulled them apart and restrained Godfrey.

Although the pickup truck was later proven to be stolen, Godfrey has claimed in both Roanoke and Franklin County courts that he was attacked unjustly, has said the bystanders were actually coming to his aid, and has accused both police and prosecutors of altering the video footage to incriminate him.

But one of the men who stepped into the fight that night, Joseph Epperly , testified in Roanoke that Godfrey cursed them at first, then started appealing to them for help only once “he was down and knew he wasn’t getting up.”

During a hearing last year, Godfrey entered an Alford plea on the Roanoke charges, acknowledging the incriminating nature of the prosecution’s evidence without admitting guilt. He later attempted to withdraw that plea and go to trial, a motion Judge Jonathan Apgar denied. After Apgar found him guilty and sentenced him, Godfrey filed an appeal against his refusal to let him take back his Alford plea. The appeal is still pending.

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