A St. Paul man presented a starkly different account Friday of what happened on the September night his girlfriend said he beat her and locked her in a dog kennel.
His lover of about a month was drunk and belligerent, Luke Brandon Scott testified in Ramsey County District Court, and he was doing his best to protect her from herself.
“She was saying that she was mad at herself because she was starting to like me too much, and that violated her creed,” Scott, 29, said as he took the stand, charged with assaulting Caitlin Hodges, 21
Scott said he didn’t want to get more involved.
He said she got up to leave, but he wouldn’t let her. “I don’t let my friends drink and drive,” Scott said.
Scott is charged with assault, false imprisonment and terroristic threats. His trial is expected to end with closing arguments Monday.
Hodges testified earlier this week that Scott put her through hours of yelling, taunts, insults, physical abuse and threats. She said that when she tried to break off their relationship, he refused to let her leave the house. Scott allegedly locked her in his dog crate and hit her in the mouth with a wine bottle, knocking out a tooth.
Scott said the two met about a month earlier through a mutual friend who lived across the street.
On the night of Sept. 25, they went out with a friend to a Minneapolis club, where Hodges stayed sober so she could drive.
But once she arrived at Scott’s house in the 1200 block of East Reaney Avenue, she wanted to catch up, Scott testified, and began taking shots of vodka with energy drink chasers. It was after 2 a.m. Sept. 26.
At some point, Hodges went to the bathroom and vomited, then lay on the bathroom floor. She wanted to stay there and sleep, Scott said.
“I said no, it’s unsanitary, and you’ll wake up sore,” he recalled. So he carried her to his bed while she was “flailing, knocking shelves off the walls.”
When they awoke later that morning, Hodges was still drunk, but she resumed drinking, Scott said. Other friends came over. They had pizza, watched movies, drank. That night, after everyone but Scott’s upstairs roommate had left, the two began to argue.
Scott said Hodges fell down several times but that he never pushed her, hit her or threatened her with a knife, as she had alleged. He said she crawled into the dog kennel on her own, with a large black dog named Xena, and asked to be left there to sleep.
“I was trying to reason with her to come downstairs and come to bed,” he said.
Other defense witnesses testified Friday that Hodges was still drinking heavily the day and evening of Sept. 26 — which Hodges denied — and that the couple seemed to be getting along fine.
Hodges is not the first woman to accuse Scott of domestic abuse.
The jury did not hear from Amber Troxell, 26, who obtained an order for protection against Scott in July 2010. She lived with Scott at his Reaney Avenue house from December 2009 through June 22, 2010.
“Over the course of the last seven months, (Scott) has pushed me, shoved me and held me in my home, preventing me from leaving,” Troxell wrote in her petition for the two-year order for protection, which a Ramsey County judge granted July 23.
Troxell wrote that Scott slashed a tire on her car, taunted her when she wanted to sleep alone and threatened to kill her dog.
On one occasion, she said, he “was angry and screaming at me, intimidating me and hovering over me and getting in my personal space. … (He) tackled me and threw me to the floor and knocked a television onto my body.”
She believed his violence was due to his abuse of alcohol, methamphetamine and heroin, she wrote.
A judge found Jan. 19 that “an emergency continues to exist” and that the order for protection for Troxell granted in July should remain in effect.
Emily Gurnon can be reached at 651-228-5522.
