LOL The Lighter Side of Snoring
Term suspended for man accused of hitting snoring teen with hammer
NEW CASTLE — A New Castle man accused of hitting a sleeping teenager in the head with a hammer because he was irritated by her snoring received a suspended sentence this week.
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Charles A. Williamson, 47, 4898 W. Henry County Road 200-N, had pleaded guilty to battery, a Class A misdemeanor carrying a maximum one-year jail term.
Williamson had denied striking the victim, the 14-year-old daughter of his girlfriend, with a hammer, but did acknowledge whipping her with a belt for disrupting his collection of Dale Earnhardt memorabilia.
Under the terms of a plea agreement, charges of battery, a Class C felony carrying a standard four-year prison term, and criminal confinement, a Class D felony with a standard 18-month sentence, were dismissed.
Henry Superior Court 1 Judge Michael Peyton this week imposed at the one-year suspended sentence and placed Williamson on probation for a year.
According to probable cause affidavits filed prior to Williamson’s May 2008 arrest, the victim’s mother, Bobbie J. Davis, gave police conflicting accounts, telling one investigator she saw Williamson repeatedly strike the girl in the head with the wooden handle of a claw hammer, but telling another her daughter had a history of hurting herself.
Williamson, a former guard at the New Castle Correctional Facility, told police he had asked both Davis and her daughter to move out of his home because he was tired of their snoring.
Davis, now 43, was charged in May 2008 with neglect of a dependent for not seeking medical treatment for her daughter. Last September, she pleaded guilty to the Class D felony and received an 18-month suspended sentence and $200 fine.
Efforts to reach James Millikan, the Henry County deputy prosecutor assigned to the Williamson case, for comment Tuesday were unsuccessful.