
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, July 21, 1990                   TAG: 9007210254
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MAN FACES PRISON FOR KNIFE WOUNDS TO WIFE

A Roanoke man who used a hunting knife to hack off his wife's long hair in a fit of rage - also slashing her back in the process - pleaded guilty Friday to malicious wounding.

At first, Timothy W. Fowler planned to contest the charge in Roanoke Circuit Court by telling the jury that while he cut his wife's hair off, he didn't intend to hurt her.

But after a morning of testimony in which his now estranged wife described the attack, Fowler changed his mind during a lunch recess and decided to plead guilty.

He will face up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced by Judge Roy Willett.

Testimony showed that the incident began with a night of bar hopping, heavy drinking and arguing and ended the next morning when Fowler came home and attacked his wife in bed.

Sharon Fowler, 27, testified that they began to argue at a Salem bar about the way she had been driving that night. "He always complained about me driving too fast and not making the right turns," she said.

After hitting his wife several times in the head, Fowler drove off and left his wife behind to hitch a ride back to their Broad Street home, she said.

The next morning, March 10, Fowler awoke to the sound of her husband screaming "get out of my house," she testified.

Timothy Fowler was standing over the bed and holding a white-handled Buck knife that his wife had given him for Christmas.

When she refused to leave, Sharon Fowler testified, her husband began to beat her and then grabbed her by the hair, which reached halfway down her back.

"He grabbed my hair, pulled it to one side and started sawing at it" with the knife, Fowler testified. "It took a little while and I could feel the knife going down my back."

By the time Fowler's hair had been cut off at shoulder length, she had two long gashes on her upper back that took 47 stitches to close.

Although Timothy Fowler had planned to say he didn't mean to cut his wife, prosecutor Al Wilson said that the wounds were not consistent with an accidental slashing.

But defense attorney Ray Robrecht said in opening statements to the jury that his client was provoked by his wife and acted in the heat of passion.

by CNB