By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – There’s no guarantee a Mossyrock father will survive surgery for a stab wound to his neck while his “crazy” girlfriend is being held in a padded jail cell today.
Law enforcement responded yesterday to a 911 hangup call and another reporting a person was stabbed at the trailer park on the 200 block of Mossyrock Road West.
An arriving deputy saw Brian Slater with his right hand near his neck and waving at him with his other hand, according to court documents. His entire head was leaning to his right.
“Slater said his crazy girlfriend Grace Barker had stabbed him,” Lewis County Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher wrote in the affidavit of probable cause.
Slater was transported to Morton General Hospital where medical staff said the wound was very deep, and was subsequently flown to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
He was alert and able to converse with a law enforcement officer sent to interview him, but reportedly had a punctured right lung and also a “jugular hematoma”.
Grace E. Barker, 26, was arrested and booked into the Lewis County Jail yesterday afternoon. She was charged today in Lewis County Superior Court with first-degree assault and scheduled to go before a judge at 4 p.m.
She was not present for the planned hearing.
Defense attorney Joely O’Rourke told the judge she tried meeting with Barker earlier.
“They have her in holding, in a padded cell,” O’Rourke said.
Several people, including jail staff, mental health persons and O’Rourke tried to talk with her, but Barker wouldn’t speak or even respond, O’Rourke said.
Lewis County Deputy Prosecutor Kevin Nelson told Judge Richard Brosey the state had concerns for her mental health as well.
Judge Brosey ordered her continued detention with a no-bail hold. But he made it clear she would have to come to his courtroom tomorrow afternoon, unless a mental health professional told him she was incapable of doing so.
Charging documents indicate Barker is the mother of Slater’s 10-month-old child, and while the two no longer live together, she’s homeless and he let’s her stay at his place.
Lewis County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Jeremy Almond was the one to confront Barker yesterday, as she came walking fast around one side of the residence toward him.
She was holding a cigarette and yelling, and continued to advance when Almond ordered her to ground. He kicked her in the chest to put distance between them, holstered his pistol, drew his Taser and eventually handcuffed her, according to charging documents.
Morton Police Department Chief Roger Morningstar reported a comment Barker made while enroute to the jail.
“So what I tried to kill him. I tried to kill him, sometimes you have to do what’s right,” Meagher wrote in the court documents.
The documents offer the following account of what Slater told law enforcement.
He said he was arguing with Barker, trying to get her to leave, and she was acting unstable.
She armed herself with a knife, he armed himself with a knife, and he tried to back down the hallway.
“Slater said he thought Barker had thrown her knife down, so he threw his in the bathroom,” Meagher wrote. “Then Barker came up to him and jabbed him in the throat with the knife.”
Slater told a questioning trooper he begged her to get help, saying he “didn’t want to die like this.” He said he then ran outside and found a friend who called 911.
First-degree assault is a class A felony with a maximum penalty of life in prison.