Background: A meat tenderizer (generic). (Joshua L. Jones/Athens Banner-Herald via AP)/Inset: Faith Garrett booking photo Richmond County Police Department
A man in Indiana walking to his car at night was followed and then struck over the head repeatedly by a woman he never met brandishing a meat tenderizer, police said.
When Richmond police first responded to a report of battery on Saturday, they said they were told by dispatch that a woman in the vicinity wearing a windbreaker and black clothing was likely carrying a hammer. Once police arrived, according to local Fox affiliate WXIN, they found their suspect, Faith Garrett, 56, and conducted a pat down.
Searching through her jacket, an officer said he made a troubling find.
“When I asked Faith what the object was, she removed a black meat tenderizer with a chrome handle and handed it to me. I asked Faith why she had a meat tenderizer in her pocket, and she stated ‘to cook with,”” an officer wrote.
The unidentified victim was walking to his vehicle before 11 that night and noticed a woman was following him. Once he reached the parking lot, he found his car and sat inside it but didn’t close the window.
That was when Garrett allegedly accosted him first by screaming at him. The man claimed he asked her to leave, and she would not. She grabbed the meat tenderizer from her coat and bashed him on his head with it once, authorities said.
As he started to get out of the vehicle, the man said Garrett struck him in the head in the same spot with the tenderizer at least three more times, officials said. He described the object as a “black hammer.” Police said he had cuts on his head.
The man said he had never met Garrett, and she had attacked him out of nowhere.
WXIN reported that the 56-year-old woman denied striking the man and told police she thought he was drunk. Officers wrote in their arrest report that Garrett appeared to be inebriated.
An officer “observed a strong smell of an alcoholic beverage coming from her person,” the outlet reported.
“Additionally, Faith had bloodshot, glassy eyes, was unstable on her feet, and had slurred, disorganized speech,” the officer alleged.
Garrett was booked into the Wayne County Jail and released on Monday. She was charged with felony battery with a deadly weapon, according to a review of online court records by Law&Crime. According to The Palladium-Item, she could face up to five years in prison for the alleged assault.
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