East Mountain Stabbing Victim Named

GILMER — Upshur County District Attorney Billy Byrd has released the name of the man who died after being stabbed in the city of East Mountain on July 28. According to KETK and the Longview News-Journal, Byrd identified him as Billy Gene Stewart, 35, of Longview. A suspect in the stabbing, James Nathaniel Nash, 46, of East Mountain, who is pictured here, remains jailed on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, but the matter will be presented to the county grand jury as a murder case, Byrd said.

The assault charge was filed before Stewart died in the emergency room at Good Shepherd Medical Center in Longview, said authorities. He was stabbed in the chest with a knife in the back yard of a home on Farm-to-Market Road 3358 after a “verbal altercation” between people at “a planned gathering,” said East Mountain interim Police Chief Betty Davis. Byrd released Stewart’s name after Ms. Davis said she would not identify him because his family did not want his name released. She had said she arrested Nash at the scene near the First Baptist Church of Glenwood after authorities received a disturbance call at 3:30am July 28.