A man flagged down a Bartlett Police officer around 2 a.m. Sept. 22 at McDonald’s to report his stepmother’s injuries. He showed the officer a photo that his father had texted around 11 p.m. on Sept. 21, showing the woman with severe facial trauma.
He said his father confessed to the violence in another message.
Officers found the suspect and the victim in an RV behind the home on Oak Road.
According to the incident report, the suspect told officers the woman needed to leave the residence for good and he had taken care of that because she was going to the hospital, and he was going to jail.
Officers arrested him and found the woman in the fetal position on a blood-soaked bed.
Her entire face and her hands were swollen and bruised. In particular, her eyes and the left side of her face were severely swollen and bruised.
The suspect’s hands showed no signs of injury.
The officers woke a juvenile male in the home for additional details. The juvenile said the suspect entered his bedroom around 11 p.m., collected the victim’s iPad from the juvenile and told him, “You need to go to bed and you will not see your grandmother tomorrow because I am taking care of that.”
In the RV, officers saw blood droplets on the floor from a chair to the bed. Droplets and smears also were on the chair and a nearby garbage can. Multiple washcloths and washable doggie pee pads soaked in blood were around the bed.
The victim was taken to the Regional One Hospital’s Emergency Room Trauma Unit in critical condition, but she was still conscious and talking.
She said they were arguing on the patio when he hit her in the face with his fist and then began to hit her face with a wooden board. She didn’t remember anything after that.
At the scene, an officer saw a wooden log near the patio fire pit with strands of hair attached to the log. The hairs were consistent with those of the victim. There also were blood droplets on a nearby patio chair and a piece of wood from a small
entertainment system lying on the ground close to the fire pit.
The suspect’s iPhone was on a table on the patio, and an officer took the phone into evidence because it was reportedly the phone the suspect used to text his son. Officers found dried blood on the phone.
