A Harford County jury found Natasha Fowlkes guilty of first-degree assault Thursday night for her role in the Thanksgiving weekend attack that left an Edgewood man partially paralyzed.
Fowlkes, 32, was one of two adult women charged in the brawl that started earlier that week with two teenage girls bickering over a man dating them both. The crowd left 44-year-old Gregory Simmons paralyzed from the waist down by a knife to his spine,prosecutors said.
After witnesses from Simmons? family testified that Fowlkes punched him, hit him with a bat and “kicked him in the face like it was a football,” Fowlkes was found guilty of first-degree assault against Simmons; carrying a deadly weapon with intent to injure; and malicious destruction of property under $500 for attacking the door to the Eloise Lane town house.
“It?s good for the victim to know that someone?s being held responsible for what happened to him,” said Assistant State?s Attorney Joel Muneses.
The jury of eight men and four women found Fowlkes not guilty of assaulting another woman, Dion Worth Carter, during the same fight. Witnesses said Fowlkes did not directly attack Carter, but Muneses argued that by aiding and abetting the others during the brawl she remained responsible for Carter?s injuries.
While the jury deliberated ? passing a note after two hours asking for the definition of aiding and abetting ? Fowlkes spent her last four hours of freedom taking a sunny evening stroll around downtown Bel Air with her toddler son, who spent the last day of the three-day trial dozing on the wooden benches of Judge Stephen Waldron?s courtroom. Fowlkes? bail was revoked after the verdict and she was takeninto custody.
She faces up to 25 years in prison for the assault charge. A sentencing date had not yet been scheduled as of Friday.
