Monday, October 7, 2013
Assailant Cuts Hole Through Door While Girlfriend Is Barricaded Inside
Police officers crawled through a window at a Fall River Road home Sunday evening to apprehend a man who allegedly cut a hole through a bedroom door after his girlfriend had barricaded herself inside.
Reports filed through the Lawrenceburg Police Department show that a neighbor summoned officers to the residence shortly after 8:00 p.m. The neighbor reported hearing a female crying and yelling and the sound of things being thrown and broken.
Officers report that after they knocked on the door, the victim crawled out a bedroom window and ran to them. She reported that she had barricaded herself inside the bedroom, blocking the door with a dresser and bed. She said that her boyfriend had “tried to get at her with a knife,” but that she had managed to escape. Officers noted that she had sustained cuts and bruises.
The victim reported that she and her boyfriend had become involved in an argument earlier that had escalated to violence. She said that he began to strike her, so she retreated to the bedroom. She said he cut a hole through the door with knife trying to gain access to her.
She told deputies that she had convinced him to give her the two knives he was wielding, “so they could talk”. She opened the door far enough for him to toss them into the bedroom, then shut and barricaded it again.
Two officers crawled into the house through the window in an attempt to locate her assailant, twenty-four-year-old Scott Allen Pufahl. They found the two knives on the floor and noted where a knife had been used to cut a hole through the door.
While another officer kicked in the front door, the officers inside removed the barricade, opened the door, and loudly announced that they were police officers.
They report that Pufahl swung his body into the doorway. They ordered him to turn around and place his hands behind his back. They said that, “After placing two lit cigarettes in his mouth, he complied.”
Officers report that Pufahl was arrested and transported to the Lawrence County Detention Center where he was booked under charges of vandalism and aggravated domestic assault.
They report that he agreed to write a statement about the incident, but that “it evolved several times.” He told officers that the victim, “hit herself while screaming for help,” and that he had cut a hole through the door, “so he could see in and pass her a cigarette.”
He said that he tried to pry off the doorknob, but was unsuccessful. He said that he did not answer the door when officers arrived because he thought it was the victim’s father.
Officers say that Pufahl asked them repeatedly not to book him on the charges. He told them that the victim would accept blame for the incident and drop the charges, therefore the case would be dismissed.
Pufahl was incarcerated in lieu of a bond of $102,000. He was scheduled an initial appearance in Lawrence County General Sessions Court on November 7, 2013.
