Mendocino County woman arrested for assault
POINT ARENA – A 20-year-old man, a resident of the Manchester-Point Arena Rancheria of the Pomo Tribe in Mendocino County, was at his home on Ocean View Drive in the hills above the famous Point Arena Lighthouse and coastal State Marine Preserve south of Mendocino. It was Sunday afternoon, September 27, and he was watching football on TV.
His aunt, Bernadette Antoinette Smith, 28, who lives nearby in the town of Manchester, came to visit. According to the Mendocino Sheriff’s Office, she and the young man had a brief disagreement. He then gave her what was described as a “dismissive gesture with his eyes.” This apparently angered Smith so much that she violently turned over the coffee table, where the young man’s laptop computer had been sitting, damaging the device.
She then grabbed a lamp, and continued to attack her nephew, hitting him with the base on his torso, leaving him with a wound. At 12:54 pm, as the morning NFL games were wrapping up, the Sheriff’s department was called and deputies were dispatched to the location. Smith had also left the scene.
Bernadette Smith was already on probation from a past domestic violence incident. On December 23, 2012, Sheriff’s deputies were called out to a dispute, and Smith was arrested at 7:15 that evening for domestic assault and assault with a deadly weapon. She was booked and then held on $30,000 bail.
The wound to the victim’s torso required medical treatment. Deputies found Smith at a residence on Sea Pine Court, close to her Manchester home, where she was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon and a probation violation. She was initially held without bail at the Mendocino County Jail, but then released on Wednesday, September 30 on $85,000 bail. She is scheduled for a preliminary hearing on October 13 at the Mendocino County Superior Court.
