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Woman denies waving bat at officers
Hillsborough investigation of incident, mistreatment claim is ongoing
By Jack Baney
The Packet Group
Friday, March 3, 2000
A township woman accused of attacking several police officers with a baseball bat said she filed a complaint with the Police Department Feb. 14 for alleged mistreatment at the hands of these police.
Police have charged Deborah Hager, 41, of Route 206, with threatening police with a bat when officers visited her house Feb. 11. She faces other, related charges of fourth-degree aggravated assault, fourth-degree resisting arrest and criminal mischief.
Police have said they visited Ms. Hager's house after receiving a call from Preston, W.Va., police that she had called them to report an assault and might pose a threat to herself.
Ms. Hager said she does not believe the police officers' stated reason for the visit and claims police were unnecessarily hostile and rough with her when they did so.
Ms. Hager said she had called the Preston police to file a sexual harassment complaint that day against a police officer there. Ms. Hager said she gave the Preston police no reason to believe that she would harm herself.
But she had complained to the Preston Sheriff's Department and the Preston Prosecutor's Office that day about a Preston officer who allegedly made inappropriate comments to her while discussing an assault complaint she had made, she said.
Representatives from the Preston Sheriff's Department and the Preston Prosecutor's Office would not comment on Ms. Hager's claims.
The incident and some of the issues Ms. Hager is concerned with are under investigation, said Hillsborough Lt. David Murphy.
Lt. Murphy said the reason for the Preston police's call is part of the Hillsborough Police Department's ongoing investigation.
"I do know that the West Virginia police department expressed a concern for her well-being to us," he added.
Lt. Murphy said the local officers' actions during the incident also are part of the investigation. But all members of the police department are trained to deal with people considered a potential danger to themselves, he said.
After one of the two officers knocked on Ms. Hager's front door, she emerged from a screen door, holding a white baseball bat and yelling at the officers to get off her property, police said.
Police said Ms. Hager began swinging the bat at the officers, who had identified themselves as police and were wearing police uniforms.
Ms. Hager said she never swung the bat during the incident, and brandished it because she was not sure who the police were or why they were on her property.
She could not see the police because she was not wearing her contact lenses and the police were shining flashlights in her face, she said. She could not hear them clearly because of a hearing impairment that keeps her from understanding words when she does not know their context or cannot see the faces of the people speaking them, said Ms. Hager.
"I didn't know anything other than people were yelling at me," she said.
Ms. Hager said she asked police to show her identification, but that they failed to do so. This is because they were afraid of being hit with the bat while showing it, according to police.
After Ms. Hager re-entered her residence, six more police arrived on the scene, police said. A dispatcher informed police that Ms. Hager had called 911 and said she was going to kill everyone outside, according to police.
"I might have said that," Ms. Hager said this week. "Whoever touched me, I was going to do my damnedest to harm them."
After Ms. Hager made the 911 call, police entered her breezeway and sprayed her eyes with pepper spray. She said this week that she cannot remember much of what happened next, but that the incident left her with many bruises and scrapes.
After the incident, police took Ms. Hager to Somerset County Jail. She was released the next day on $2,500 bail.
The incident might come down to her word against that of the police, she said.
"I certainly didn't have any witnesses other than my parrot," said Ms. Hager. "His rendition of it is my screaming — he goes, 'No, no, no!' "
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