Warren woman avoids second possible indictment by grand jury

Photo

Melanie Ferrell

Staff report

WARREN

A 38-year-old city woman who killed a man in self-defense in July 2009 has once again been set free by a Trumbull County grand jury, this time after hitting her boyfriend in the skull with a hammer.

The grand jury refused to indict Melanie L. Ferrell of Belmont Street Northeast on two counts of felonious assault Tuesday in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.

Prosecutors in Warren Municipal Court charged Ferrell in October after Warren police found her boyfriend 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.

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. Holliday later died.

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.

A Trumbull County grand jury refused to indict Ferrell, and she went free.