Man arrested for assault after allegedly striking someone in the head with a coffee table leg

Monica Zalaznik
October 21, 2020

BUCKHANNON – A Buckhannon man was arrested Sunday after allegedly injuring someone by hitting them in the head with a coffee table leg earlier in October.

Khori Simmons, 25, was arrested Oct. 18 for malicious/unlawful assault causing bodily injury, a felony. The incident allegedly occurred on Oct. 5, 2020, according to the criminal complaint in the Upshur County Magistrate Clerk’s Office filed by investigating officer Deputy Joseph Barcus with the Upshur County Sheriff’s Office.

The complaint says that just after midnight on Oct. 5, Barcus was dispatched to a residence on Route 20 South Road for a report of trauma resulting in injury. The caller said she walked to the residence and discovered her boyfriend lying on the floor, bleeding from the head.

Barcus spoke with the male victim when he arrived on the scene, and the victim said he and the caller had allowed Simmons to come into the residence to get out of the weather. The victim said he and Simmons became involved in “a small argument” and at one point, Simmons allegedly pulled a knife but then put it away.

Simmons allegedly proceeded to pick up a coffee table leg with the heads of two screws sticking out of it approximately two inches and struck the victim in the left side of the head. According to the report, the victim was covered in a large amount of blood and had an approximately two-inch-long, inch-and-a-half deep laceration on his forehead, which exposed the victim’s skull.

The file says the victim also had another longer, shallow laceration on the back of his head. The victim was medically treated by Upshur EMS personnel and transported for to the hospital for further treatment.

According to the report, Simmons left the residence prior to Barcus’s arrival and was not located immediately thereafter but was eventually arrested Oct. 18 by Trooper J.S. Tonkin with the Buckhannon detachment of the West Virginia State Police.

Bail was set at $40,000.

The potential penalty for a conviction of unlawful/malicious assault resulting in bodily injury is confinement in the state penitentiary for not less than one year nor more than five years or confinement in jail up to one year and a fine of up to $500.