A 40-year-old man is recovering after he was allegedly beaten with a mini-sledge hammer, shocked with a Taser and dragged around south Utah’s Red Cliff Desert Reserve by a rope around his neck.
Washington County sheriff’s deputies began unraveling the attack April 15, after they met with the man at the intensive care unit at Dixie Regional Medical Center in St. George, according to a probable cause statement filed in 5th District Court.
Interviews with three people involved in the alleged revenge scheme led to the arrests of a 20-year-old woman and a 21-year-old man.
According to the probable cause statement, the 40-year-old told police he had been “seeing” the woman for a “little bit,” but recently had a falling out. On April 14, a mutual friend invited the victim to to meet him and the woman on the reserve, on Cottonwood Springs Road, near the Black Gulch trail head.
The victim and the woman were kissing in the backseat, when the 21-year-old man (not the mutual friend) came out of the bushes wearing a mask and carrying a hammer and began attacking the older man. The woman also was dating the 21-year-old, according to the probable cause statement.
The 21-year-old allegedly beat the older man with a hammer, while the woman tried to tie the man’s arm and legs. The victim said the 21-year-old tied a rope around his neck and dragged him around the desert during the attack, and only stopped short of killing him because he “got winded.”
The mutual friend told police the 21-year-old “beat [him] to within one inch of his life using a hammer,” and also used a Taser on him multiple times.
When police interviewed the 21-year-old, he told deputies that the 40-year-old had sexually assaulted the woman “in the recent past,” and that he had recently told the older than “he would harm him if he harmed [the woman].” He added that the 40-year-old “crossed the line” the night of the hammer assault.
In the 21-year-old man’s version of events, the woman went to meet the older man that night to get money to get her car after it had been impounded. The younger man was in the trunk of the car that the woman and mutual friend drove that night, and when the mutual friend let him out of the trunk, he heard the woman screaming, which prompting him to pull the older man off the woman and attack him, according to a probable cause statement.
The younger man told deputies he “blacked out” during the attack because of a heart condition and “did not intent to hurt the victim so badly.”
The woman told police a different story: she knew the younger man wanted to teach the 40-year-old a lesson that night.
The mutual friend told detectives the same thing, saying the 21-year-old had told him they were going to “give [the man] a beating” that night.
That beating left the 40-year-old with gashes on his head, nerve and muscle damage to his right eye, nerve damage to his right hand, damage to his throat, cuts all over his legs, chest and arms, and rope burns on his wrists and legs, according to the probable cause statement.
Deputies found bloody rocks, gloves, a bloody shirt, beer cans and a mini-sledge hammer near where the attack happened.
The woman also told detectives that she took the older man’s wallet and phone. She and the younger man reportedly used the victim’s finger to unlock his phone, and the two deleted his messages before dumping the phone. The couple also tried to use the older man’s bank card at Walmart to buy shoes and a radar detector. The card was declined, and they used the man’s cash, instead.
The 21-year-old and the woman both have been charged with first-degree felony counts of aggravated kidnapping and aggravated robbery, and misdemeanor charges of tampering with evidence and threatening violence, according to court documents. Both were also charged with aggravated assault, although the man was charged with a second-degree felony, while the woman was charged with a third-degree felony.
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