Eatonton police officers were called by Putnam County EMS to the Shell station on Sumter Street recently for a woman who was reportedly injured by a knife and bleeding.
When they arrived, the woman told them she had fallen on a knife while climbing through a window of an abandoned house on Putnam Avenue, according to incident reports from the Eatonton Police Department.
Officers Tommy Williams, Sgt. James Gaither and Chad Burket went to the house on Jan. 2, the date of the call.
“Seeing blood splatter in several rooms led us to start an investigation and prompted Sgt. Gaither to call Chief (Howell) Cardwell and Investigator (Hargrove) Jones to the scene,” Williams wrote in his report.
After checking out the scene, Jones went to Putnam General Hospital and spoke to the victim, who he described in his report as “intoxicated and covered in blood with bandages on her left arm.”
The woman gave Jones the same story about climbing through a window. Jones reportedly told her that her story was inconsistent with what he found on scene at the house.
So, her story changed. The victim said she and her boyfriend, Ronald Farley, had been drinking to celebrate the New Year when an argument broke out between them, and she hit him and knocked him down. The woman said Farley got angry and grabbed a knife and stabbed her in the arm.
Jones then talked to Farley, who he also described as “intoxicated and covered in blood, with a cut on his nose and a black eye.”
Farley said he had recently had back surgery, and when the woman had pushed him down, he was afraid it would hurt his back, so he used a knife to get her off of him. Farley reportedly said he had no recollection of how he got the knife, and he did not want to press charges against the woman.
When asked how he had gotten inside of the house, Farley told Jones that he had a key.
“However, after speaking with the homeowner, she stated that no one should have been in the home at that time, and no one was given permission to enter," the report wrote.
Ronald Lee Farley, 50, of Eatonton, was arrested on Jan. 2 on charges of aggravated assault and burglary first-degree.