MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A 50-year-old woman faces up to 27 years behind bars for a gruesome attack on her boyfriend.
Dawn Renee Peel has been charged with second-degree attempted murder and second-degree assault after police say she cut her boyfriend’s neck with a knife.
Authorities responded to a 911 call on 1:48 a.m. Monday regarding a stabbing on the 600 block of Aurora Avenue in St. Paul.
A man told police he was stabbed in the neck by his girlfriend, later identified as Peel.
Officers said they saw the man lying in the first floor lobby, covered in blood. He said he escaped from their apartment but she was still inside. The man had a 5.5-inch cut across his neck — it took 23 staples to close the wound.
He told police Peel woke him up and asked him if he loved her. He said that he did. That’s when she said, “This is the last time you’re going to see me,” before slicing his neck with a large knife.
The man said he was able to push her away and put pressure on the injury.
Officers found the apartment door unlocked with a security latch holding it open. Police say they knocked on the door and asked to enter. A woman inside said she was too scared to open the door because “he might be there.”
The woman finally opened the door. She was completely nude with wet hair and blood stains on her face and leg. Police say it didn’t appear she had any injuries.
Officers say there appeared to be fresh blood stains in multiple areas of the apartment. When they asked what happened, Peel said she was sleeping when her boyfriend came in and yelled at her. She said he told her, “they cut me.”
She then started saying, “he beat me up, he beat me up real bad.” Police asked if she was referring to her boyfriend and if he assaulted her and she said, “yes.”
Peel said she didn’t know how he got cut and didn’t know anything about a knife.
Officers noticed Peel’s breath smelled of alcohol. They asked her how much she had to drink and she said, “not enough.”
Police found a large knife, with water and blood on it, in a kitchen drawer.
The boyfriend was transported to Regions Hospital in critical, but stable, condition. He told police he told Peel she needed to go to a hospital because she wasn’t well mentally and had been drinking heavily.
He said she injured her knee after a drunken fall. He said he made a bed on the floor and was woken up by Peel. She told him to look into her eyes and then kissed his forehead and said it was the last time he would see her eyes.
“What she did to basically take a sharp kitchen knife to someone’s neck and do what she did in terms of really trying to saw his head off,” said Ramsey County Attorney John Choi.
He said she has physically assaulted him three other times and is controlling and jealous.
The complaint says the victim told investigators that Peel cut his neck like she was slaughtering a goat or a cow, sawing back and forth across his neck with the knife.
He told police he believed she was trying to kill him.
Ramsey County attorney John Choi says his office is seeing more and more cases of domestic violence — a number of those cases involve women as the batteres.
Peel is currently being held in the Ramsey County detention center on a $75,000 bond.
