The city’s police chief testified Friday that former Sedgwick County sheriff’s deputy Brett Seacat admitted he’d “bullied” his wife the night before she was found shot to death in their Kingman home after a fire.

Chief Marc Holloway, called to testify in the fifth day of Seacat’s first-degree murder trial, told Kingman County jurors he responded at about 4 a.m. April 30, 2011, to the Seacats’ home, which was “fully engulfed” in fire.

Seacat had already called 911 and reported his wife killed herself and set the home on fire.

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Prosecutors on Friday charged a Maize High School teacher with a criminal threat involving an assistant principal, and a judge ordered that he not have any contact with school staff and not go on any Maize district property.

Now that school is out, the bond for the defendant, James R. Stiverson, is being reduced from $250,000 to $25,000, Judge Warren Wilbert said during Stiverson’s first court appearance Friday afternoon. Wilbert said Stiverson also will be under electronic monitoring if he is released on bond.

The charge, a felony, alleges that on Tuesday, Stiverson “did then and there unlawfully threaten to commit violence, communicated with intent to place another in fear, to-wit: Julie D. Cannizzo, or in reckless disregard of the risk of causing such fear.” Cannizzo is a Maize High assistant principal.

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Jurors in the murder trial of Brett Seacat watched a video Thursday of the April 30, 2011, fire that quickly engulfed the upper story of his Kingman home, bursting through the windows on the back of the house before crawling up and over the rooftop.

They also heard two loud popping sounds come from the engulfed home, followed by more popping sounds, and a man could be heard saying “something’s going off” and that there were “fireworks in the house.”

Shawn Harbert testified he and a friend were walking on Pine Street in Kingman when they smelled smoke and saw the fire. He captured the blaze on video with his cellphone.

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