A Carson City man faces felony domestic battery and battery with a deadly weapon charges after he allegedly hit his girlfriend, splitting the top of her head open with an unknown object, possibly a weight, which caused a five-inch gash.
Raymond Eugene Carter, 54, is being held on $35,000 bail. According to a deputy report narrative, officers were dispatched to the 2000 block of California Street on Friday at about 8:30 p.m.
As deputies arrived the victim was being treated for a large laceration to the right side of her head. The suspect, Carter, was sitting by a doorway and covered in blood. The man said he and his live-in girlfriend were arguing and she came into the room where he was laying down and hit him over the head with a cooking pan. The investigating deputy asked him if that was all and the man replied, "yeah, pretty much."
The arresting deputy asked how the woman got a gash to her head, and Carter said he didn't know, according to the arrest report. He later said that when the woman struck him in the head with the pan he got angry and shoved/pushed her away in self defense. He said she may have hit her head on something when he shoved her but he did not know for sure, according to the arrest report.
Carter had a cut on the back of his head that was consistent with being struck with something and was transported to the hospital where he received stitches for his cut.
The investigating officer said he tried to speak with the woman as she was being loaded into the ambulance, however, she was semi-conscious and was having problems speaking, the report stated. She was able to tell the paramedics treating her that "he hit me with a weight or something," the report stated.
The arresting officer spoke with a person who lived close by who didn't see but heard the argument, including the sounds of the couple hitting each other and getting knocked into walls. The person said they heard a woman scream and then more hitting, according to the report. Shortly after the scream, the front door slammed shut. The witness stated they could hear more yelling and arguing and that the victim came outside and stood, looking at the front door.
The injury to the victim's head was "extremely large and required a lot of stitches," according to the report. The gash didn't stop bleeding until the doctors at the hospital were able to sew it up. The cut was approximately 5 inches long and deep enough to see the bone of her skull, the report stated.
The victim had heavy swelling around the cut where it appeared she had been struck with a blunt object. When the deputy was talking to the victim, he noticed her right eye was shaky, along with her left arm and leg. The victim was still having difficulty speaking at the hospital and said she did not remember what had happened other than being struck in the head with an object by Carter, the report stated.
Miranda rights were read to Carter while at the hospital and he asked to speak with the investigating deputy. He told the officer that he got hit with the pan and then threw the victim across the room. Earlier Carter had told the officer that he had just pushed her, the report stated.
Carter told the officer that he never saw the woman bleeding at any point during the altercation. The blood that was on Carter was dried across his body, and he had very little blood on his legs and feet. It didn't appear to the officer that Carter had dripped very much blood on the ground from his wound, according to the report.
Meanwhile the woman's injury was such a deep cut it that it was bleeding down her face and down her legs, and it appeared that the majority of the blood on the carpet in the home was the woman's head injury, the report stated.
Because of the evidence in blood found at the residence and the extreme wound to the woman's head, Carter was taken into custody and faces charges of domestic battery with substantial bodily harm and battery with a deadly weapon. Both are felonies.
— All suspects are to be considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.