EPHRATA — A Moses Lake man was sentenced to more than six years in prison for beating his girlfriend to death.

Grant County Superior Court Judge John Antosz sentenced William M. Creek, 49, to six years and two months in prison, a month after Creek pleaded guilty to attempted manslaughter in the first degree. Antosz also ordered Creek to stay away from his victim’s estranged husband.

Creek started attacking Elizabeth Bouvier in the parking lot of the Moses Lake Walmart, after a clerk asked him for the receipt for propane. When Creek got into his pickup, the clerk spotted him punching Bouvier in the leg three or four times, according to a Moses Lake police report. Creek drove away in the blue Ford extended cab truck.

He pulled into a business parking lot on Maiers Road. Witnesses spotted Creek beating up the woman and trying to push her out of the truck. When he pushed her out of the truck, she beat on the window to get back inside and collapsed, according to the police report. Then he got out of the vehicle and tried picking up the woman, yelling at her to get up as he dragged her back to the truck. Then he dropped her, ran to the nearby business, telling them to call an ambulance.

When police arrived on the scene, they found Bouvier lying on the ground. She was taken to Samaritan Healthcare and airlifted to Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane where she died. Samaritan staff told police she suffered a skull fracture and a hematoma on the right side of her brain.

The victim’s family explained to the police Creek “exhibited a pattern of control and abuse over the victim prior to her death. This included moving around to keep her isolated,” according to the police report. Bouvier was dating Creek for about a year or two at the time he killed her, and told her estranged husband she thought he would kill her about a week before the assault.