Brickles

ELKINS — Probable cause was found in the case against a man accused of strangling a woman over Easter weekend.

Lance Franklin Brickles, 21, appeared in Randolph County Magistrate Court for a preliminary hearing with his attorney, James Hawkins Jr. Randolph County Magistrate Mike Dyer found probable cause, forwarding the case to be considered by the grand jury.

Brickles is charged with strangulation, a felony. He is being held in the Tygart Valley Regional Jail on a $25,000 cash-only bond.

Before the hearing on April 29, Hawkins asked Dyer to lower Brickles’ bond to $5,000 and modify the form of it to property, surety or a 10% bond. Hawkins called the current bond “oppressive” and said Brickles was not a flight risk due to having family in the area and that Brickles was aware that he was not allowed anywhere near the alleged victim.

Assistant Randolph County Prosecutor Leckta Poling said the state was opposed to any deduction or modification of Brickles’ bond, explaining that Brickles has a history of domestic battery, including a prior conviction.

Dyer denied the request for bond modification after finding probable cause.

Poling called the alleged victim to testify before the court. In her testimony, the alleged victim said that she and Brickles had been in a relationship at the time. On April 19, as the alleged victim and Brickles were going to bed in the early morning hours, the alleged victim said that Brickles asked to see her phone because “people had told him stuff.”

The alleged victim says that after she handed him her phone, she went into the living room to try and sleep. She said that Brickles followed her into the living room, and during an argument, he began hitting her on the head “three or four times” with a steel toe boot.

The alleged victim then told the court that Brickles got on top of her and began to choke her with his hands, his thumbs allegedly on the center of her throat. She said Brickles choked her “almost unconscious” to the point that “everything started going black” and she could not breath. The alleged victim said she was not sure how long Brickles had his hands on her throat.

During her testimony, the alleged victim told the court that she had bruises on her wrists, arm and face from where Brickles had grabbed her, and that, as a result of him choking her, the necklace she had been wearing left an imprint on her neck.

That same morning, the alleged victim said that when she told Brickles he wasn’t allowed to come with her to her family’s Easter dinner, he “freaked out” and allegedly threw her into her kitchen table. She also said that he threw her phone, breaking the phone’s camera and disabling the device’s sound.

She then said that Brickles told her to put makeup on to cover her bruises so he could take her to her family’s Easter dinner. While at her family’s, the alleged victim said a non-relative guest was the one to call the police.

During cross-examination, Hawkins questioned if the alleged victim actually did pass out during the alleged strangulation. The alleged victim said she did not fully lose consciousness. Hawkins also asked if Brickles had put pressure on her chest or torso or covered her nose or mouth. She said he did not.

When questioned by Hawkins as to why she did not call the police herself, the alleged victim said she was “scared.”

In a follow-up question, Poling asked if Brickles said anything to the alleged victim after the strangulation incident, to which the alleged victim said, when she came out of the bathroom afterwards, he had a knife and asked her “Have you ever been stabbed to death?” and said he would kill her and her family if she told anyone what he did.

Poling also called Senior Trooper A.P. Petrella, of the Elkins Detachment of the West Virginia State Police, to testify for the court. Petrella had filed the initial criminal complaint.

Petrella told the court that he had taken photos of the alleged victim’s injuries, noting that the bruises on her throat matched the pattern of her necklace. In the criminal complaint, Petrella detailed that he witnessed “contusions on her face, both forearms and her back.”

Petrella also told the court that it was observed that the alleged victim had petechiae, or pinpoint spots on skin caused by small blood vessel bleeding, on the back of her neck. In the complaint, Petrella wrote, “From this officer’s training and experience, petechiae is a common injury resulting from strangulation.”

In closing arguments, Hawkins said that the state had failed to prove probable cause for the charge of strangulation as it did not prove that Brickles caused the alleged victim bodily injury and loss of consciousness, which Hawkins claimed were both required for the charge.

According to the West Virginia State Code, the charge of strangulation is defined as “Any person who strangles, suffocates or asphyxiates another without that person’s consent and thereby causes the other person bodily injury or loss of consciousness is guilty of a felony.”

Poling argued that “or” was the key word in the West Virginia code, saying that both bodily injury and loss of consciousness were not, in fact, required for probable cause to be found.