A Dexter man is in the Stoddard County Jail without bond, charged with the Class A felony of domestic assault in the first degree after his live-in girlfriend was found in his home in a pool of blood and with, according to authorities, "life threatening" injuries to her head and face.
An affidavit filed on Thursday by Dexter Det. Cory Mills details the circumstances surrounding the charges against Herbert Alan Saffell, 39, who resided with his girlfriend at 1012 Hickory Hills Drive.
According to the affidavit, on Wednesday, March 5, at 12:45 p.m., Saffell's daughter, Lola King, called Stoddard County EMS after finding the victim on a bedroom floor at her father's residence. She had gone to the residence to check on the couple's well-being after having not heard from the two for "a few days."
Dexter Patrolman Kevin Cluck also responded to the call. King told authorities she had entered the home through an unlocked door and had found the victim (who shall remain unidentified) "laying on the floor with blood on her, and she was awake and breathing." The victim's eyes were reportedly swollen, and a "large amount" of dried blood was on her face and hands.
"Both eyes were bruised and her left eye was severely swollen," Mills stated in the report. "There was a laceration on her top lid and another on her face. Her hands were bruised and her right knuckles were also swollen."
Cluck noted blood spatter on the bedroom dresser on the north wall of the bedroom. The victim, able to speak, told Cluck she was lying in bed when an unknown person began assaulting her. She said she believed the assailant had used the front door of the home to gain entrance, and that he had used his fist and the dresser to assault her. Cluck noted that the inside of a dresser drawer was blood splattered.
She also told authorities she could not identify the assailant.
The victim was taken by ambulance to a Cape Girardeau hospital, and King was further questioned. That questioning revealed that the victim was cold to the touch upon the daughter's arrival. King noted that she had covered the victim with blankets prior to making the 911 call. Attempts to call her father's cell phone were unsuccessful, she told police.
No evidence of forced entry was found at the residence. The bedroom was in "complete disarray," Mills' report said, with jewelry scattered and several broken items in the room. The pillow where the victim's head had rested was "completely blood soaked."
"The blood spatter pattern (on the dresser) was consistent with a violent assault having occurred in the immediate vicinity of the dresser," Mills stated.
About two hours after the victim was found, Mills and Det. Lt. Trevor Pulley made contact with Herbert Saffell on his cell phone. Saffell reportedly agreed to be interviewed by police and reported to the local station less than an hour later, and an interview with the detectives took place, during which Saffell admitted to the assault, and claimed it was in self-defense. It was noted that Saffell had a visible laceration on his right hand, a laceration on the left hand middle finger and an approximate two-inch scratch on the right side of his cheek.
Saffell admitted he was "involved in an altercation" with the victim and that he struck her in the face and head with a closed fist and a dresser drawer. He told detectives he had tried to awaken her that morning to obtain a number from her cell phone and that the victim "went nuts," reportedly throwing items at Saffell and hitting him in the face and head, at which point he struck her in the face four times with a closed fist.
Saffell told police the victim struck him with the dresser drawer before he took it from her and struck her twice in the face with it. Upon further questioning, Saffell said he lost count of how many time he struck the victim because the "blacked out."
Saffell reported told police he was sorry for his actions and that he "deserved a second chance." At 4:38 p.m., he was placed in custody at the Dexter Police Department.
Change of Story
Shortly after the arrest of Saffell, police once again interviewed Lola King, Saffell's daughter who placed the 911 call earlier in the day. During that second interview, which took place at the Police Department, King admitted that she had lied about the circumstances surrounding the 911 call. In her revised story, she told police she was contacted around 1 p.m. on Wednesday by a friend of her father's who told her that her father requested she come by his residence. The friend dropped her off at the Hickory Hills Dr. within minutes of the visit.
King told police she entered through the unlocked door and waited about 30 minutes in the living room until her father came out of the master bedroom. It was at that point that she saw the victim on the bedroom floor. She said her father told her, "She drove me to it." He then left the residence, and that, she told police, is when she called 911. King was not charged in the incident.
Pulley, the report concluded, contacted the Cape Girardeau hospital on Thursday, March 6, at which time the victim admitted that her assailant was her live-in boyfriend, Herbert Saffell. The hospital confirmed to Pulley that the victim suffered "multiple facial fractures."
Saffell remains in custody at the Stoddard County Jail without bond, after Judge Joe Satterfield deemed him to be a "danger to the community."
He will appear in court on Thursday, March 13 at Bloomfield.