Haines Borough Police last week charged a 77-year-old Haines woman with felony second-degree assault after she allegedly ran her car into a woman on Mathias Avenue.
The district attorney on Monday reduced the charges to fourth-degree assault, a misdemeanor.
According to court documents, the 77-year-old repeatedly and intentionally attempted to hit the other woman with her car following a dispute on Thursday, March 26. The injured woman came to the police station to report the incident and was taken to the Haines clinic, where she was diagnosed with bruised knee tendons.
Several hours prior to the accident, the victim reported the 77-year-old woman had poured glue into the keyholes of three of her padlocks, ruining two of them.
While the victim and a male friend were working on cutting the padlocks off, the 77-year-old woman drove up in a van and turned it off.
When the victim urged the woman to come talk to her about the glued padlocks, the woman “started her vehicle back up and got a look in her eye like, ‘You’re dead. You’re mine,’” the victim told police.
The woman then drove forward, hitting her with the vehicle, then backed up and drove forward and hit her again.
“(The first time) I put my hands on the hood and jumped up. You know, she caught my leg the first time but I was able to balance myself enough, because I thought I was going underneath the car, I really did. I was scared. And then she stopped and she backed up, and then she came at me again,” the victim said.
The victim said she ended up on the passenger side of the vehicle in a planter that bordered the house, trapped between the vehicle and house. She said she was holding a lock in her hand and hit the passenger’s side window of the vehicle, but it didn’t break.
When police responded, the victim’s male friend who had been helping cut off the locks corroborated what happened. He said after the incident he yelled at the woman and made sure she didn’t drive off.
“She just sat there for a while just looking, with that glazed look, like (she) couldn’t see nothing. There was nothing in her eyes,” he said.
Police analysis of tire tracks also corroborated the victim’s account.
The woman is charged with fourth-degree assault, a class A misdemeanor that carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail and/or a $10,000 fine.
Haines Borough Police Chief Bill Musser testified at the woman’s first court appearance, stating he would normally ask for $1,000 bail but decided to ask for $500 because the woman is elderly, a longtime resident of the community, and has no similar incidents on her record.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for April 16.