BY RACHEL DOVE
MOUNTAIN CITIZEN
PILGRIM — A Wolf Creek woman was strangled, assaulted and imprisoned after interrupting her boyfriend’s Xbox game to tell him she was going to bed.
Martin County Dispatch received a call Dec. 20 from a woman who identified herself as Constable Bradford Preece’s wife, Linda. The caller requested a deputy come to her location on S. Wolf Creek Road in Pilgrim regarding a possible physical altercation between a man and woman who rented a home from them next door. She stated the woman’s brother had come to her house seeking help from Constable Preece but said her husband felt he should wait until another officer arrived since the couple rented from them.
Dispatch received a second call on the incident, this time from a caller identifying himself as Constable Preece and asking for an update on the deputy’s estimated arrival time. The caller told the dispatcher the victim’s brother “is scared to death.”
Upon the arrival of Martin County Sheriff’s Deputy David Adams, Sierra Dingess ran out of the house. The deputy reported he heard 27-year-old Bart Anthony Horne of Pilgrim inside the house screaming and cussing.
“Miss Dingess advised her boyfriend had been hitting, strangling and holding her in the house against her will,” Adams said.
“Miss Dingess advised Mr. Horne was playing the Xbox, and when she went in there to tell him she was going to bed, he began to cuss and call her names.”
According to the police report, Dingess told officers that she ignored Horne’s outburst and walked back into her bedroom, but he followed, grabbed her and threw her down on the bed with enough force to break the bed, and began to strangle her.
“She started seeing spots and was getting lightheaded, so she sunk her fingernails into Horne’s back to get away but was unsuccessful,” according to Adams.
Dingess said Horne let go of her momentarily when he heard her brother go out the door. He allegedly told Dingess she had better go to the Preece’s home and tell her brother to come home and “fix it so he doesn’t go to jail.”
Dingess claimed Horne then walked into the bathroom and punched a hole in the wall.
Dingess told Adams that when she got up from the bed, Horne went to grab her again, and she tried to push him off and scratched his chest in the process. She said that angered Horne, and he punched her in the face, threw her around the bedroom, then pinned her to the floor and began strangling her again.
Dingess suffered what was believed to be a broken hand when she tried to block her attacker’s blows.
The alleged victim told the officer that she managed to get up from the floor and tried to escape the residence, but Horne pushed her down on the couch “because he didn’t want the neighbors knowing he had been hitting her.”
Dingess’s brother, Brycse Dingess of Debord, told the deputy he had awakened to the sound of water running and loud banging coming from his sister’s room. He stated he heard his sister say two or three times, “Get off of me.” According to the police report, the brother said the last thing he heard before fleeing to the constable’s house was his sister gasping for air.
Adams noted the alleged victim had red handprints on her neck, her left eye was puffy and starting to swell, she had a knot with a cut on the right side of her head, and her left hand was red and appeared to be bruising above her pinky and ring finger knuckles. She was missing her right earring, which Adams found on the broken bed.
Adams also noted there was a hole in the bathroom wall that corroborated Dingess’s statement.
Horne was arrested on charges of fourth-degree assault (domestic violence), first-degree strangulation, second-degree unlawful imprisonment and menacing.
Once arrested, Horne began blaming his girlfriend, Adams reported.
“He started cussing her and tried to intimidate her, saying she’s going to regret this.”
The time of arrest was 12:51 a.m.