Arizona man charged with smacking, biting woman at Las Vegas motel
An Arizona man was arrested last week at a Las Vegas motel, accused of slapping a woman on her bare butt and biting her on the back multiple times.
Damon F. Freeland, 35, of Houck, Arizona, was arrested and booked into the San Miguel County Detention Center after being charged with felony criminal sexual contact, and misdemeanor battery.
On Aug 6., Las Vegas Police responded to a motel on Grand Avenue, near Baca Avenue, after a man told dispatchers he’d heard a woman crying and asking for help. The caller said he’d followed the sound of the woman’s pleas to a specific room. He said as he stood outside that room, he again heard a woman crying and asking for help, and he heard a man in the room tell her to shut up.
According to a statement of probable cause filed in San Miguel Magistrate Court, when police arrived, an officer could hear the woman crying from outside the room as well. Police knocked on the door, and a woman wearing only a tank top — without pants or underwear — answered the door. Freeland was naked and asleep on the bed inside the room.
Police said that when they woke Freeland, he seemed “confused and highly intoxicated.”
In court documents, officers note that both Freeland and the woman seemed to be intoxicated, and an officer located an empty liquor bottle on the floor of the room.
The woman told police the room had been rented in her name, and that Freeland occupied a different room at the motel. She said she’d met Freeland at the motel and he’d come to her room so they could drink alcohol together.
The woman said that when she laid down on the bed, Freeland laid next to her and tried to force himself on her.
She told police Freeland said he wanted to have sex, and when she said no, he smacked her hard on the butt. She told police it hurt and that she told him to stop, but instead, Freeland began biting her on the back.
Police found red markings in the shape of a handprint on her butt, along with three bite marks on her upper back.
Freeland was booked into SMCDC later that evening, but released on Tuesday after posting bond.
Under the conditions of his release, Freeland is not allowed to leave New Mexico without permission from the court, and he has been ordered to reside at an apartment in Albuquerque where he must remain from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. daily.
Freeland is scheduled to appear in San Miguel Magistrate Court again at 10 a.m. on Aug. 20 for a preliminary hearing.
