The Electric New Paper :
Charged with shoving phone down lover's throat
He claims she swallowed it
She says she can't remember
IN a bizarre case of assault in the US state of Missouri, the facts are not being disputed: During an argument with her boyfriend, 25-year-old Melinda Abell ended up with a handphone shoved down her throat.
28 July 2006
IN a bizarre case of assault in the US state of Missouri, the facts are not being disputed: During an argument with her boyfriend, 25-year-old Melinda Abell ended up with a handphone shoved down her throat.
But how it got there is another question.
Prosecutors have charged her boyfriend, 24-year-old Marlon Brando Gill, with first-degree assault, saying that he forced the phone down her throat because he was angry and jealous.
But Gill's lawyers have argued that Miss Abell swallowed her phone intentionally because she didn't want Gill to find out who she had been calling.
According to US papers, Miss Abell told police that on 23 Dec last year, Gill dragged her out of her home in Blue Springs, Missouri, and forced her into his car. As they were driving, they got into a heated arguement, with Gill screaming at her asking to see her handphone.
That was when the phone got lodged in Miss Abell's throat.
She was taken to a hospital where doctors removed the phone using a 'pincer' tool. Doctors also told her father that she could have died if she hadn't gotten to the hospital so quickly.
So far, Miss Abell has given inconsistent accounts of what happened before she was taken to a hospital. She testified on Tuesday - the first day of Gill's trial - that she could not remember how the phone got in her throat, saying she had too much to drink that night.
She said 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.'
She added in her statement: '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 centred on her relationship with Gill, which started in 2004.
'It was good at first, then it got rocky,' Miss 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 handphone incident.
The trial continues. - AP.
