A Pittston man who skipped out on his sentencing for stalking the Kennebec County sheriff was arrested Wednesday after a year of being wanted on a warrant, police said.

Kennebec County deputies, with the assistance of the U.S. Marshals Service, arrested Nicholas Worthing, 38, of Pittston, following a brief chase, Chief Deputy J. Chris Read of the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Thursday.

Police were seeking Worthing on a warrant for his failure to appear at his June 2025 sentencing hearing in Skowhegan, Read said.

Police located Worthing running from his residence on Worthing Road in Pittston, and a police dog was able to stop Worthing, Read said.

Worthing was taken to a hospital, where he was cleared medically, Read said. He was then taken to the Kennebec County Correctional Facility in Augusta and then to the Somerset County Jail in Madison, where records show he was being held without bail.

The Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office charged Worthing with violation of conditions of release and refusing to submit to arrest, Read said. 

The office also plans to charge Worthing with aggravated criminal mischief, aggravated reckless conduct and violation of conditions of release, in connection with allegedly using a front-end loader to smash the roof of his neighbor’s truck in November, Read said.

No sentencing date in the stalking case was set as of Thursday. The judge who presided over the trial, Andrew Benson, is now Maine’s U.S. attorney, meaning it could take longer for another judge to review the case.

Worthing was found guilty of Class C stalking in May 2025. Benson’s verdict came two months after a brief bench trial at the Somerset County Superior Court.

The trial was the culmination of four years of twists and turns in court proceedings, delayed in part as Worthing went through nearly a dozen court-appointed lawyers. The case also raised key First Amendment issues.

The case centered on a Facebook account Worthing used to send direct messages to the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page from January 2017 to March 2021.

At trial, prosecutors presented dozens of profanity-filled messages that Worthing sent to the page. Kennebec County Sheriff Ken Mason had testified at trial that he does not run the page himself. His wife, who is not a Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office employee, and a sheriff’s office staff member ran it, he said.

Many messages claimed Mason and other law enforcement officers had molested children, a claim Mason denied on the witness stand.

In his verdict, Benson highlighted several messages in which Worthing threatened to murder police officers and act violently toward their families as communication that crossed the line of free speech.

Worthing, who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor-level stalking of a state trooper in 2018, was first arrested in connection with the case in August 2021.

Worthing went through various attempts to get two stalking charges on a 2021 indictment dismissed, based on legal issues similar to those his attorney raised at trial, court records show.

Prosecutors dropped a more severe Class B stalking count on the indictment in 2024, court records state. They also agreed to move the case out of Kennebec County to Somerset County, which is within the same prosecutorial district, after initially objecting to Worthing’s request to change venue in 2023.

After finding Worthing guilty of stalking, Benson let him free on his previously posted bail pending sentencing, over prosecutors’ objection.

Mason, the sheriff, said at the time that while he respected the decision, he was concerned due to Worthing’s past threats of violence.