A 29-year-old man was charged with first-degree assault after he allegedly attacked his mother Thursday morning on Bainbridge Island.
The son, a Bremerton resident, was arrested without incident at his mother’s home Jan. 24 and booked into Kitsap County Jail.
According to court documents, Bainbridge police were called to the woman’s home just before 7 a.m. Thursday.
The woman said her son came to her house and demanded money, then repeatedly tried to kill her.
She escaped through a bedroom window after he left the room, however, and went to a nearby house where a neighbor called 911.
The woman was taken to the emergency room at Harrison Medical Center-Silverdale for treatment Thursday.
“She’s got some fractures on her face,” said Bainbridge Deputy Police Chief Jeff Horn, as well as a broken nose.
The woman feared for her life during repeated attacks, he said.
“She believed that she was going to die,” Horn said.
According to court documents, the woman discovered her son outside her home just after midnight.
She said her son was homeless and asked for money for a hotel room, but she told him to stay the night.
At about 6 a.m. Thursday, the woman said her son started demanding money. She told officers that she said she did not have enough money to buy him a home, and she recalled handing him her cell phone after he asked to use her phone after claiming her landline was not working.
He then threw both phones aside and started ridiculing his mother, calling her “dumb” and saying she could not now call 911.
The son then asked her to take hundreds of thousands of dollars from her bank account and give it to him so he could get a home.
When told she didn’t have that kind of money, the son said he didn’t believe her.
As she tried to leave her bedroom, he hit her and then tried to grab her neck from behind and strangle her, she told police.
When the woman tucked her chin to her chest, her son was not able to grab her around her neck, so he pushed her face into a pillow.
The woman said she recalled being hit in the head multiple times.
She said her son then picked her up and she knew he was going to put her in the bathtub, where she feared he would try to drown her.
But her son dropped her as he tried to carry her, and spilled a bottle of over-the-counter pain-relief pills in the process.
“He saw it and demanded she swallow every pill,” police said in a certificate of probable cause. “She thought it would be an easier way to die than drowning, suffocating, or beating, so she began to ingest the… pills.”
The woman estimated she swallowed 20 to 25 pills, and she begged him to take her credit card.
She told police she thought her son was going to kill her, but when he left the room, she opened a window, grabbed her cell phone, and escaped.
A neighbor told police she heard banging on her front door at 6:30 a.m., and opened it to find her neighbor with a bloodied face, in a night robe, and barefoot.
The woman asked her neighbor to lock her doors, shut off the lights, and call police because her son had just tried to murder her. They waited in a bedroom until authorities arrived.
Police found the son still in his mother’s Bainbridge home, and he allegedly said he knew why they were there and that it was “mostly his fault.”
The man was booked into Kitsap County Jail on charges of first-degree murder, first-degree assault with a deadly weapon, and interfering with a report of domestic violence. Bail was initially set at $755,000.
Police said the son has three prior assault convictions in Kitsap County, as well as convictions for possession of stolen property and possession of drug paraphernalia.
The son allegedly told police during a jailhouse interview that he argued with his mom but he did not recall striking, strangling, suffocating or carrying his mother.
“When asked how he felt during their encounter, he said he was disappointed in her unwillingness to help him,” police noted in court documents.
Police found blood on the woman’s bed, on the floor and on the bedroom window sill.
The man had an initial court appearance Friday and remains in custody.
Conviction of first-degree assault can result in a life sentence in prison and a $50,000 fine.
This story originally appeared in the Bainbridge Island Review, a sibling paper of The Daily Herald.
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