(AP) — The man accused of killing a sheriff’s deputy and seven people he knew in Lincoln County has led a life marked by violence.

When Willie Cory Godbolt was 17, his father, a Brookhaven police officer, was shot to death. In the two decades since, Godbolt was charged with misdemeanor assault or similar crimes at least a dozen times, and convicted in at least six of them, Lincoln County court records show.

Last June, his wife accused him of choking and punching her, and putting his hand down her mouth so she couldn’t scream.

In the last four years, Godbolt had been cited repeatedly for making threats or assaulting family members and others. He was convicted after punching a husband and pushing a wife out of the bleachers at a football game in October 2013.

Godbolt’s in-laws, the May family, pressed charges against him multiple times, with Godbolt being convicted of death threats in November 2015.

His wife, Sheena Godbolt, obtained a restraining order against her husband last June after accusing him of felony domestic violence. Sheena Godbolt swore in court papers that her husband harmed her “by punching her in the stomach repeatedly and by choking her. She states he also put his hand down her mouth where she couldn’t scream for help.”