A Gillette, Wyoming, woman charged with beating up her boyfriend told police he punched himself in the face Monday night to get her in trouble, authorities say.
But when police inspected the man’s fists and the woman’s fists, they only found redness and damage on hers, according to an evidentiary affidavit filed Tuesday in the domestic battery case of 35-year-old Caron Highhawk.
Highhawk is also facing aggravated assault and domestic battery cases from this summer and spring on allegations that she beat that same boyfriend and threatened him with a knife.
Highhawk’s ex-boyfriend has had a heart wrenching on-and-off relationship with her, he told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday.
Citing a desire to spare his kids from fallout, the man asked to remain anonymous. It’s also Cowboy State Daily’s policy not to name abuse victims unless they agree to be named.
“I’ve got to move on. I’ve got to stop this,” he said.
Then Came Monday
He said he had been hanging out with her in the days leading up to Monday, but broke up with her after she said cruel things about his kids.
She called him about 26 times that evening, says the case affidavit.
Emotionally exhausted, the man called one of his guy friends while cooking himself dinner at home and vented to his friend. But then, the man remarked that Highhawk had finally quit calling.
“She’s quit calling because she’s on her way to your house,” the friend answered, according to the man’s interview.
The man looked outside and noticed Highhawk pulling up outside his window, court documents say.
“Man, she’s here,” the man told his friend.
But the man let Highhawk into his home in one last effort at reconciling their toxic relationship, he said.
He was frank about why.
“She’s very persuasive. She says that she will get sober and do better, and that she loves me and she wants us to have a life together,” he said. “And she’s very attractive. She’s beautiful — and I’m weak.”
When times are good between the two of them, she makes him feel cherished, he said. When times are bad, it’s terrifying and he’s afraid for his life.
This Again
The man made them both dinner, then they cuddled up to watch TV. She confronted him about whether he’d spoken to another woman while she was in jail for allegedly threatening him with a knife, the affidavit says.
After a verbal argument and a 911 call in which the man wasn’t able to address the dispatcher, but the dispatcher could hear them arguing, Highhawk became violent, says the document.
He tried retreating to the kitchen to get a beer, the affidavit continues, adding that she followed him in there and punched him four times in both eyes.
The document says she broke his Oakley glasses, and his left eye started swelling shut.
The pattern roughly matches Highhawk’s earlier cases, in which court documents detail a sudden bout of jealousy followed by violent attacks.
In the knife incident, court documents say Highhawk told the man, “I’ll ruin you.”
In a Wednesday Facetime call with Cowboy State Daily, it was evident the man’s eyes were swollen and bruised. His left eye bore a charcoal-black crescent bruise underneath it. A purple diagonal mark streaked the area above his right eye. He said the notch mark was from Highhawk’s rings.
Outside in the cold, he wore an Underarmor hoodie and a well-worn baseball cap.
Bear Hug
The man stands more than 6 feet tall and weighs about 245 pounds.
Highhawk is much smaller, standing about 5-4 and weighing 133 pounds, according to her court file.
But the man said he’s never hit her back. His court file supports that, showing just a speeding ticket in the past decade.
“I’ve never hit a woman before in my life, and I’m never gonna,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “I just stand there and let her do it.”
In the kitchen Monday night, the man put Highhawk in a bear hug to make her stop punching him, he said.
Later when Gillette Police Department officers arrived on scene in response to the man’s 911 calls, he asked if the bear hug had been permissible, and they said it had, according to his interview.
Show Me Your Fists
GPD Officer Liz Hodge interviewed Highhawk after she interviewed the man that night.
Highhawk said the man had let her into the home, and the argument followed. She told Hodge that the man had threatened to “get her in trouble.”
Highhawk went to use the bathroom, and while she was in there, she heard the sound of flesh hitting flesh, she told the officer, adding that she came out to find the man punching himself in the face.
“I asked Highhawk if I could see her hands,” wrote Hodge in the affidavit. “She had red markings near her knuckles, which would be consistent with striking someone with closed fists.”
Hodge next asked the man if she could see his hands.
His hands had no red markings.
It was a strange twist of fate, the man told Cowboy State Daily with a chuckle: often his knuckles are scuffed from working as a mechanic, but he hadn’t been working for about two weeks before this incident, so his knuckles were pristine when police asked to see him.
Hodge also had the man put his glasses back on, and she found that the break in the lens aligned with the worst of his eye injury, she wrote.
Highhawk’s public defense attorney did not respond to a Cowboy State Daily phone message request for comment by publication time.
In Jail Now
Highhawk is in the Campbell County Detention Center, the jail confirmed Wednesday. She’s being held on a $250,000 surety bond.
Meanwhile, the man has gone to court for a protection order. He’s trying to rearrange his life so that he won’t be drawn to her again, he said.
Highhawk's most recent case is ongoing in Gillette Circuit Court. Her September aggravated assault case is ongoing in Campbell County District Court.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
