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Woman faces new charges
Photo
Melanie Ferrell
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
A city woman who stabbed a man to death outside of a North Park Avenue convenience store in 2009 has pleaded innocent to new charges that accuse her of hitting a boyfriend in the skull with a claw hammer.
Melanie L. Ferrell, 38, of Belmont Street Northeast, is being held in the Trumbull County jail in lieu of $50,000 bond, charged with two counts of felonious assault in the most recent episode.
When police arrived at Ferrell’s apartment about 10:45 p.m. Saturday, they found Ferrell’s 32-year-old boyfriend, also of the Belmont Street address, with a bloody, circular indentation in the back of his head.
They found Ferrell on the floor crying, a bloody, claw hammer under her. Ferrell’s nose was bleeding, police said.
Ferrell said her bloody nose had come from the boyfriend, who had struck her after she yelled at him after she walked in on him engaged in a sex act with another woman.
The second woman told police that when Ferrell came home, she grabbed a hammer, hit the man in the back of the head, then hit her on the right side of the head. The second woman received a minor laceration.
The man was taken by ambulance to Forum Health Trumbull Memorial Hospital for treatment. The hospital had no record of him Monday.
Judge Thomas Gysegem of Warren Municipal Court approved temporary restraining orders against Ferrell requiring her to stay away from the man and the second woman.
On July 28, 2009, Ferrell pulled a knife out from under her shirt and stabbed Craig A. Holliday, 39, of North Park Avenue in the chest about 11:45 p.m., police said. The assault occurred after Holliday pulled a paint-can-lid remover from his belt and used it to cause a superficial scratch on Ferrell’s chest, police said.
Police initially charged Ferrell with murder, but prosecutors later amended the charge to voluntary manslaughter on the grounds that she killed Holliday only after she was provoked by Holliday.
A Trumbull County grand jury refused to indict Ferrell, and she went free.
Ferrell has been in the county jail 14 times since 1994 on charges ranging from drunken driving to carrying a concealed weapon to aggravated robbery, burglary and domestic violence. Trumbull County Common Pleas Court records indicate she has never been convicted of a felony in Trumbull County.