POTTAWATOMIE COUNTY, Okla. (KFOR) – A Pottawatomie County woman is saying she was hit in the head with a tire iron, allegedly by the girlfriend of a man who was tutoring her.
Now, felony criminal charges have been filed.
Denise Pickard, of Tecumseh, has been charged with “assault, battery, or assault and battery with a dangerous weapon” by Pottawatomie County.
The alleged victim tells KFOR Pickard beat her with a tire iron on September 4 and left her bruised and bleeding.
“It does sound like a pretty violent attack,” said Tecumseh Police Department Chief J.R. Kidney. “She was hit in the back [of the] head with what she describes as being like a tire iron to a car. I have seen some of the pictures of that. She did receive a laceration to the head.”
Court documents reveal that the victim said she was at her friend’s house in the 19000 block of North 13th Street in Tecumseh and he had been tutoring her for a college class.
She heard a knock at the door and her friend went to answer it. She heard her friend yelling. Moments later, the victim said she was hit in the back of her head by her friend’s girlfriend.
“She walked in and hit me in the back of the head multiple times with a tire iron,” the victim is heard saying in police body cam footage KFOR obtained. In the video, first responders acknowledge injuries on her head while examining her at her own residence.
The victim, who didn’t want to go on camera with KFOR for fear of another attack, tells us the tire iron knocked her to the floor and she then ran outside for her life.
She said Pickard followed her, slammed her to the ground in the front yard, and hit her several more times with the tire iron. This is also the information she reported in the police report we obtained.
The police report said the victim was bleeding from the back of her head and her left shoulder was red from being pulled to the ground. It also said Pickard and her boyfriend left in a car, and that the victim then flagged someone down on the road to take her home.
When asked about the nature of the attack in the body cam footage, Pickard told police, “He was supposed to be helping me with my college homework. I guess instead he was using me to get back at his girlfriend, which I wasn’t privy to the information.”
Chief Kidney said he cannot make any actual assumptions about what happened since he has not yet spoken with Pickard.
“I don’t know if it was a jealousy type situation,” he said. “So one can only assume that maybe she was jealous that there was another female in the residence or something like that.”
KFOR stopped at Pickard’s home to inquire about the incident and she told us she did not attack anyone with anything in any way.
She’s aware of what her accuser has been saying and said she is making everything up.
Pickard’s boyfriend, who was also there, told us the accuser was at their home, but he was not tutoring her and that no attack ever happened.
When we asked about all the blood seen on the accuser in the body cam footage, he said they have no comment. The couple encouraged us to talk to their lawyer.
We reached out to the couple’s lawyer for comment, but have not yet heard back.