Darien Husband, Wife Both Charged After Dispute

Police, called to a Glenwood Drive home on a report of a domestic dispute on Tuesday, Oct. 2, were confronted with four somewhat different descriptions of what happened.

In the end, police arrested both the husband and the wife in the home on charges of disorderly conduct. Here's a summary version of how that arrest came about, as described by a Darien Police spokesman:

The initial call to police from a family member, at 7:09 p.m., said the husband, 47, had engaged in violence against his wife, also 47 years old. Police then went to the house and spoke with at least four family members.

The wife told police that her husband had been drinking and they began to argue. She said her husband had then turned violent, slapped her several times in the face and neck, grabbed her by the arms and held her down, whereupon she retaliated in self defense before her husband then threw her down a flight of stairs.

When officers asked the wife to show them signs of redness, bruisings or trauma on her body from all that violence, they found no signs. She showed them her knees, which she said were injured after falling down the stairs, but police said they found no signs of redness or bruising on them.

The husband said that the entire dispute had simply been an argument and that he had not laid hands on his wife. He did have a scratch on the right side of his neck, which he said came from his wife throwing a dustpan at him. That's how the argument started, he said.

He then lightly restrained her and lightly pushed her off the last step of the stairwell, he said.

Another family member gave yet another account, saying the husband provoked his wife, saying "hit me." Then the wife pushed him in the back with a broom and dustpan. When she began walking down a staircase, he pushed her, the family member said.

Police decided that with extremely minor injuries on the husband and statements describing some kind of violence from each of them, that each should be charged both the husband and the wife with disorderly conduct.

Each was issued a summons ordering them to appear the next day in state Superior Court in Stamford.