FELONY AGGRAVATED ASSAULT DANGEROUS (with Knife) NOT CHARGED – State v. Mr. T (DMC No. 13894) (Scottsdale Police Department DR No. 13-17308): Mr. T lived with another man, the alleged victim in his case. One day, after a brief verbal and physical altercation the night prior, Mr. T was served with an Order of Protection. In the Order of Protection his roommate was alleging that Mr. T had held a fork to his neck and drew blood, which would be an Aggravated Assault (Dangerous) per Arizona Revised Statute ARS 13-1204. After being served with the order of protection, Mr. T met with our office and ultimately retained our firm for Pre-Charge services.
After being retained, the Pre-Charge team met to discuss the plan of attack in his case. The immediate plan was to (1) order a copy of the police report from the Scottsdale Police Department, and (2) send a Trebus letter to the Maricopa County Attorney’s office as a precaution. After these steps were taken, we had multiple calls with Mr. T and his father regarding the status of the order of protection and steps Mr. T was taking to remove his property from the home. During one of these calls, Mr. T’s father advised that the alleged victim had contacted him regarding our client getting the rest of his property out of the house. After obtaining the telephone number for the alleged victim we reached out to speak with him regarding his side of what happened. The call was very short and ended with the alleged victim telling us to obtain a copy of the police report. Given his demeanor, the pre-charge team discussed the concern we had of potential class 3 dangerous charge coming Mr. T’s way.
Approximately a month and a half after being retained, a Detective from the Scottsdale Police Department reached out to our client and left a message requesting a call back. At this point, we returned the Detective’s call and submitted the Trebus letter, previously sent to the County Attorney’s Office. Later, we received the police report which was only two pages long and indicated it was a “furthered investigation.” After multiple follow-up calls to the Scottsdale Police Department and we finally received the full police report one month later. In that report, it delineated that there was a physical fight between our client and his roommate over using a fork on a nonstick pan. According to the alleged victim, our client was intoxicated. The alleged victim indicated that our client put the fork to his neck and held hot oil in the other hand as if he was going to dump it on him, however he didn’t. Our client is alleged to have said “I should kill you.” It was at this time that the alleged victim left. The report also indicates that an Order of Protection was in place and that the civil standby had occurred. The report ends with the following quote, “based on the fact that Michael T is not responding to my voice message personally and he is now represented by an attorney, I am unable to confirm the version of events described by the victim and have classified this case as inactive.”