Arkansas woman receives probation in assault of Lawrence County deputy
Mar. 14—MOUNT VERNON, Mo. — An Arkansas woman was granted probation this week when she took a plea offer on assault charges she was facing in Lawrence County.
Heather R. Cooper, 30, of Siloam Springs, Arkansas, entered an Alford plea Tuesday in Lawrence County Circuit Court to counts of second-degree assault of a special victim and resisting arrest in a plea deal dismissing a more serious offense of first-degree domestic assault.
An Alford plea admits no guilt but acknowledges the probability of a conviction if the case were to proceed to trial.
Cooper's plea deal called for suspended impositions of sentences on both counts with four years of supervised probation. Circuit Judge David Cole accepted the plea bargain and ordered the defendant to complete 160 hours of community service in the first two years of probation.
A deputy sheriff responding to a vehicle crash Feb. 27 on an offramp of Interstate 44 at Halltown came upon an alleged assault in progress involving Cooper and a male identified only as "JLH" in a probable-cause affidavit.
The document states that Cooper was biting the victim's face and that she pushed his head under some standing water as the deputy arrived on the scene. She then turned on the deputy as he was getting out of his vehicle and tried to slam the door on him. In the course of doing so, she broke his windshield and threw broken windshield glass at the deputy and tried to cut him with a shard of glass, the affidavit states.
