Police/Fire

Alleged knife attack sends man to jail

WESTFIELD – A Southwick man was jailed pending a trial on a charge of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon after he allegedly attacked his girlfriend with a 10-inch butcher knife.
City police report that officers Frank Solimani, Ricky Maciorowski and Jason Perron responded to a call early Friday morning from a resident of Colonial Pine Acres at 50 Southampton Road and arrived to find a woman waiting outside with her eight-year-old daughter.
Solimani reports that the woman said that her boyfriend had attacked her with a knife during an altercation and had fled on his bicycle.
The woman said, in a statement to police, that Jonathan L. Westbrook, 24, of 76 Davis Road, Southwick, has been her boyfriend for two weeks but said that they have known each other well for 14 years.
She said that an argument developed when she told him that she wanted to end their relationship and said “Westbrook bit me in right forearm leaving red teeth marks. He also started hitting me and throwing me around the basement bedroom.”
The woman wrote that she tried to call police but Westbrook smashed the phone so she yelled for her mother, with whom she lives, who was upstairs.
The victim went on to report that her mother “came down to the basement and refused to call the police saying she would be evicted. She told me to go upstairs to the living room” and then went to her bedroom on the second floor.
According to the woman’s statement “Westbrook then came up to the living room and started dragging me to the basement. He then tried to stab me with a 10-inch butcher knife” and, in defense, she “bit him in the arm and scratched him in the face.”
She said that she broke free and fled upstairs where her mother again refused to call police and snatched the phone from her when she tried again to call them herself.
Regaining the phone, the woman said she then called her daughter’s father who, in turn, called police.
The woman said she then took her daughter, who had been asleep during the incident, and went outside to await police.
Solimani reports that when the officers arrived “The victim was observed to have knife wounds to her arms and wrists.”
He reports that while the other officers continued the investigation at the scene, he searched the area and found the suspect on his bike on North Elm Street.
Westbrook had a different story and said, Solimani reports, that the woman had initiated the knife attack. “Westbrook stated that (the woman) ‘sliced’ him with the knife. Westbrook lifted his shirt, where I observed several fresh knife wounds consistent with what he was saying.”
Back at the housing complex, Solimani reports, the victim denied assaulting Westbrook with the knife but said that she had punched him to defend herself. She later told officers that she “does not remember much about the incident, because she ‘blacked out’.”
The knife involved in the incident was not found, Solimani reports.
He reports “The investigation determined that Westbrook was the aggressor” and he was arrested. He wrote in his report “It should be noted that Westbrook has a history of being the aggressor in domestic violence incidents. Westbrook recently violated a Restraining Order on 10/23/2014, in reference to another relationship his was in at that time.”
The victim was evaluated at the scene by Westfield Fire Department paramedics and encouraged to go to hospital.
Westbrook complained of his injuries while in custody and fire department paramedics came to the station to evaluate his cuts.
Westbrook was arraigned later in the day and was held in lieu of $1,000 cash bail pending a Jan. 2 hearing.

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