On Saturday, March 31, at 3:14 p.m. officers of the Santa Monica Police Department went to the 100 block of Idaho Avenue after they had received a report of a woman who was being assaulted and pepper sprayed by her sister-in-law.
What made this even more of an urgency was that the woman who was being assaulted was pregnant with child.
When the officers arrived, they detained the suspect and spoke with the victim and discovered that she was five months into her gestation period. The officers continued to speak with the pregnant woman who told them that she lived, along with her husband, in the same apartment complex as her sister-in-law.
She also told the officers that the sister-in-law had assaulted her on past occasions.
On this occasion the pregnant woman told the officers that she had pulled into the parking garage and was waiting to board the elevator when the sister-in-law exited the elevator as the doors opened, and began to verbally assault her.
The pregnant woman then continued to state that when she attempted to enter through the elevator doors the sister-in-law started to pull her hair and then followed that up with some face punching. During this altercation the sister-in-law then produced some pepper spray and sprayed it into the pregnant woman’s face.
The pregnant woman then fell to the ground and then the sister-in-law began to kick her in the backside and stomach several times. The sister-in-law then took the pregnant woman’s cellphone and bag containing her shoes and attempted to drive away. The pregnant woman then fled outside and a witness helped her and called 9-1-1.
The officers searched the sister-in-law’s car, and found the cellphone as well as the bag of shoes. Based upon the rather horrifying evidence, the officers decided to arrest the sister-in-law and she was charged with robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, and assault with a caustic chemical.
The bail for this 43-year-old Santa Monica resident was set $50,000.
Incidentally, during this investigation the pregnant woman’s husband who was also the brother of the suspect arrived and took his wife to hospital where she was treated and examined to make sure that her fetus had not sustained any damage.
Editor’s Note: These reports are part of a regular police coverage series entitled “Alert Police Blotter” (APB), which injects some minor editorial into certain police activities in Santa Monica. Not all of the Mirror’s coverage of incidents involving police are portrayed in this manner. More serious crimes and police-related activities are regularly reported without editorial in the pages of the Santa Monica Mirror and its website, smmirror.com.
