Texarkana man is sentenced for ex-wife’s attack

He admits to felony charges in 2018 assault with hammer

HOT SPRINGS — A Texarkana man arrested last year after attacking his ex-wife with a hammer at her Hot Springs residence was sentenced to five years in prison Monday after pleading guilty to felony charges in Garland County Circuit Court.

Shane Alan Brown, 39, has remained in custody since his arrest Dec. 12. He pleaded guilty to second-degree domestic battery and was sentenced to five years in prison, and to felony failure to appear and was sentenced to three years in prison, with the sentences to run concurrently.

A court order barring him from contact with his ex-wife that was previously issued will remain in place. Court costs were expunged for time served since his initial arrest Feb. 4, 2018, and his re-arrest Dec. 12, 2018, after failing to appear at a hearing Sept. 10.

According to the probable cause affidavit on the battery charge, Garland County sheriff’s deputy Stacy Morgan arrived shortly after 11:30 p.m. Feb. 3, 2018, at CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs regarding a battery that had occurred at a residence on Morphew Road.

Morgan met with a woman, 31, who had a large bruise under her left eye and stated that her ex-husband, identified as Brown, had struck her with a hammer. She said Brown had been staying with her and had been awake for several days after taking meth and was “acting paranoid” for about a week.

She said he had kept her, their 2-year-old daughter and her 60-year-old father, who lives with her, locked up in her apartment for about 24 hours, putting a chair under the apartment door and a mattress over the window. She said he had taken her phone and kept walking around the apartment carrying a hammer and threatening them if they tried to leave, according to the affidavit.

At one point, the woman said, Brown became violent and hit her in the face and the back of the head with the hammer. When she threatened to call police, he told her “call them,” and then began hitting himself with the hammer, started cutting himself on both arms and broke a picture frame over his head, according to the affidavit.

The victim’s father told police that he saw Brown hitting himself with the hammer and cutting himself. The couple’s daughter was in the apartment during the incident and “saw all this happening,” according to the affidavit. After several hours, Brown calmed down and agreed to take them to the hospital to have a rash on the baby examined.

Brown walked out of the treatment room, and the woman asked a nurse for help, and the nurse contacted authorities, according to the affidavit.

Morgan met with Brown in a different room of the hospital and noted that he had a large bruise under his right eye, cuts on both arms and “seemed very agitated.” Brown said he didn’t know what was going on and that his ex-wife had awakened him, saying they needed to take their daughter to the hospital, the affidavit said.

Asked about his injuries, Brown said his ex-wife had hit him with a pan. Asked if he had used meth, Brown said, “Yes, we’ve all done some today,” the affidavit said. He said things “got out of hand,” and he and his exwife argued, but he denied hitting her and claimed “she did that [expletive] to herself” and was “setting him up.”

After determining that Brown was previously convicted Jan. 5, 2016, for third-degree domestic battery and based on the statements from the ex-wife, her father and Brown, Brown was arrested on a charge of second-degree domestic battery, punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Brown was released on $10,000 bond April 6, 2018, and pleaded innocent to the charge June 18, 2018. At one point, the case was set for trial May 9 but was later continued and set for a disposition hearing Monday.