Woman headed to trial for stabbing husband

NORRISTOWN » A Lansdale woman facing attempted murder charges appeared to reject a plea agreement offer and now faces a trial on charges she stabbed and seriously injured her husband during a domestic disturbance.

Michelle Lynn Everett, 46, refused to verbally respond to a Montgomery County judge when he asked her on Tuesday if she accepted a plea agreement offer that carries a sentence of four to eight years in prison and five years’ consecutive probation on charges in connection with the 10 p.m. Nov. 10, 2015, knife attack inside the Acorn Street home she shared with her husband.

“You need to verbalize a response to me,” Judge Thomas C. Branca addressed Everett.

At one point, Everett, seated in a chair at the defense table, turned her back to the judge and had to be ordered by a sheriff’s deputy to face the judge for the remainder of the hearing.

When Everett continued to refuse to verbally respond to questions, the judge ordered deputies to return her to the county jail and said he would schedule her case for trial.

Defense lawyer Emily D. Sieber told the judge she would further discuss with Everett the plea agreement offer made by Assistant District Attorney Lauren Marvel. Testimony did not reveal how long that proposed deal would remain on the table.

Under the plea agreement offered by Marvel,

Everett would get credit for the nearly three years that she’s been in jail while awaiting trial on charges of attempted murder, aggravated and simple assault, recklessly endangering another person and possessing an instrument of crime.

Everett’s case was delayed for several years while Everett underwent various competency evaluations.

Everett, under the proposed plea deal, would be prohibited from having any contact with her husband, who according to testimony now resides in another county. Everett also would be restricted to communicating with the couple’s three children via letter, according to the terms of the plea agreement.

Everett briefly glanced at the victim as he sat in the courtroom gallery on Tuesday.

An investigation began when Lansdale police were

dispatched to the couple’s home in the 400 block of Acorn Street for a reported stabbing.

“Upon their arrival, officers were able to see through the front door window and observe blood throughout the first floor. Officers also could hear a male, later identified as the victim…scream inside the apartment,” Lansdale Detective Chad Bruckner alleged in the arrest affidavit.

Officers forced their way inside and discovered Everett’s 42-year-old husband

lying on a bathroom floor covered in blood and with a wound to the upper back and shoulder area “with blood spurting out,” according to the arrest affidavit.

While officers were providing first aid, the man reported that his wife had stabbed him and that he didn’t know where she was, according to police.

Officers found the couple’s three minor children screaming in an upstairs bedroom and after ensuring their safety they searched the rest of the house and found Everett hiding under a blanket in the basement, according to the criminal complaint.

Everett’s husband was transported by ambulance to an area hospital for treatment. Police said the victim sustained four cutting wounds to his neck and shoulder region, including one on his neck running from the larynx along the jaw line toward his ear, according to the criminal complaint.

One of the cutting wounds punctured an artery and resulted in a large loss of blood and the victim required two pints of blood immediately upon arrival at the emergency room, police said.

During the subsequent investigation, the victim

told detectives that Everett had stabbed him with a kitchen knife in their second-floor shower, but he was able to disarm her. However, when he tried to flee the residence, Everett grabbed a second knife from the kitchen and allegedly stabbed him again on the first floor, according to court documents.

Police said they recovered two bloody knives from the kitchen sink.

When detectives interviewed Everett she allegedly admitted to stabbing her husband and “admitted she was trying to kill him,” according to the criminal complaint.