A Safford man was taken into custody Monday afternoon after allegedly assaulting his mother. The victim told authorities that she and her son were sitting in their living room while engaged in a heated argument. When the woman wouldn’t agree with her son, he got angry and pulled her out of her chair by her neck and head and dragged her to the floor. He then got on top of her and began striking her.
The woman tried grabbing nearby objects to hit her son with, but he took them from her and hit her with them. She finally grabbed a fire poker, which he took and hit her in the leg, causing a large laceration. The man took his mother’s purse and dumped the contents on the floor. He then took her keys and drove away in her car.
According to the police report, the woman had visible injuries on her hands and above her right eye as well as the laceration on her thigh.
A deputy gathered evidence from the scene and asked the woman to call back when her son came home or if she found out where he was.
A couple of hours later she reported that her son was back at the residence and had locked her out of the house. She told responding officers that when her son came home, she went to her room and closed the door. Her son followed her and began abusing her again. She went outside and her son locked the doors.
The man barricaded himself in the house and ignored police commands to come out for approximately 45 minutes. A deputy managed to get him to open the door and talked to him through the locked security door. The man claimed that he was the victim and that his mother had hit him – a claim that he kept repeating as he paced back and forth inside the house, throwing up his hands and acting belligerent.
The deputy told him that he needed to come out or law enforcement was coming in. The man replied that if they came in, someone was going to get hurt. He then said that he was just going to hurt himself. After that, he slammed the inside door shut.
Dispatch tried calling the man’s mother, but got him on the phone instead. The call was transferred to a deputy who tried to get the man to surrender. The man didn’t seem to listen to the officer, interrupting him and saying a lot of things that didn’t make sense or were off topic.
A detective took over the conversation and when he identified himself over the phone the suspect said that since he was a detective, he would come out of the house. The man exited the house, sat down on the front steps and began sewing some leather boots. Officers approached and told the man to put the needle down. The man mumbled that the officers did not get his side of the story and that his mother had hit him. They did notice that his right eye was swollen. They asked if they could come closer to take a photo of the man’s eye. He agreed and put down the needle. When they got close enough, several officers rushed the man and wrestled him to the ground. The man tried fighting them off but after an officer deployed a taser, they were able to place him in handcuffs.
The man was booked into the Graham County Jail for Aggravated Assault and Resisting Arrest.
