(link-thanks Kathleen Cumiskey)
2 bizarre stories of cell phone violence:
Woman testifies about cell phone in throat
Wed Jul 26, 8:56 PM ETINDEPENDENCE, Mo. - Prosecutors say a man shoved a cell phone down his girlfriend’s throat because he was angry and jealous. But defense attorneys insisted as a trial got underway that the woman swallowed the phone intentionally to keep the defendant from seeing whom she had been calling.
Marlon Brando Gill, 24, is charged with first-degree assault in the December incident involving 25-year-old Melinda Abell. Abell has given inconsistent accounts of what happened before she was taken to a hospital, where an emergency room doctor removed the phone.
She testified Tuesday on the first day of Gill’s trial that she couldn’t remember how the phone got in her throat, saying she had too much to drink that night.
She said in court that she could not recall writing a statement to police after the incident, in which she said: “I think he thought I’d been talking to other guys. … He took my phone to see who I had been calling.”
The statement added: “If I didn’t want him to see my phone, I would have just thrown it out the window and busted it.”
Much of her testimony centered on her relationship with Gill, of Kansas City, which started in 2004.
“It was good at first, then it got rocky,” Abell said.
She testified that he had verbally and physically abused her, but under cross-examination she acknowledged she never told police about the abuse and continued to live with Gill until the cell phone incident.
Jul 27, 2006
Cell phone dispute tied to choking
LEOMINSTER– A city man is charged with attempted murder for allegedly choking his mother Tuesday during a disagreement over her cell phone, according to Leominster District Court records.
…Nidia Baez, 47, who also lives at the Third Street address, told police Mr. Padilla-Baez had programmed several of his friends’ telephone numbers into her cell phone, records stated. Ms. Baez decided later that it was her cell phone and she did not want all of these numbers in the phone, so she deleted them, records stated.
When Mr. Padilla-Baez came home Tuesday after being away for several days and learned that his friends’ numbers had been deleted,he began screaming at his mother, she told police. Mr. Padilla-Baez then illegedly pushed Ms. Baez to the ground, grabbed her throat with his hands and began strangling her. A police officer later saw a slight redness on Ms. Baez’s neck, records said.
By Mary Jo Hill TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
mhill@telegram.com
