Mount Holly woman describes violent encounters with ex

Misty Oakes doesn't feel safe.

She locks her door as soon as she enters her house, and has done so for so long that it's become her nature.

"I've lived like this since July of 2017, constantly looking over my shoulder," Oakes told a jury on Wednesday.

July 23, 2017 is when Oakes says the father of her daughter, Derrick Higdon, tried to kill her, breaking into her house and setting it on fire while she hid in terror on the floor of her car. Two of Oakes' cats, Spike and Barney, died in the fire.

This week, Higdon stands trial on charges of attempted first-degree murder, breaking and entering with intent to terrorize and injure, cruelty to animals and first-degree arson. Higdon is representing himself in court, with attorney Charles Lifford present to offer legal advice.

Oakes testified Tuesday and Wednesday, recounting her on-again-off-again relationship with Higdon. The two met in 2009 on a dating website called Plenty of Fish, and they went on their first date on March 13 of that year. The relationship seemed to be going well at first: Higdon, Oakes said, was "a good listener. We had great conversations… we had a lot of things in common."

But, she added, there were issues early on. Several months into their relationship, after she went on a vacation to Europe, he accused her of cheating on him.

"That was the first time that things weren't great anymore," she said.

The two began talking about moving in together and she put him on her lease, but on the weekend he was supposed to move in, he backed out.

"At that point, I thought it was over. I thought that we were breaking up," Oakes said.

But he kept reaching out to her, and the two continued being intimate, and she became pregnant. Their daughter was born March 13, 2011, two years to the day after they met.

The relationship, Oakes said, had stops and starts. After their daughter was born, they were not having sex, but he stayed with her most of the time and helped care for their baby. At some point, he moved in permanently, but sometime after that he said he didn't think they would date again. She bought a townhome in Clover, South Carolina, and moved, and she talked to a lawyer about drawing up a custody agreement.

When she told Higdon she had done so, "he was very angry," she testified.

Higdon went to an attorney and drew up a custody agreement on his own that granted him full legal custody of their daughter, but Oakes didn't agree to it. They met and came up with an arrangement that worked for both of them.

They eventually began dating again, and in 2014, they decided to try to live together again, but their relationship was difficult, Oakes said. When they argued, he would "monologue" until she'd agree with him, and he eventually broke up with her and she returned to her townhome in Clover.

"Again, I thought… it was over," Oakes said.

In April 2015, Oakes purchased a home on Farm Springs Drive in Mount Holly, and Higdon began dating someone else.

Still, Oakes said, Higdon was possessive of her, and her at one point angrily confronted her about dating someone else, pinning her against a wall and putting his forearm against her neck.

He told her she couldn't see the man she was dating anymore.

"Which was very confusing because he was in a relationship with someone else," she said.

Their relationship became "a very strange cycle" of "him attempting to control the things I was doing," Oakes said.

He'd argue with her, and she'd give in, eventually going to his home and having sex with him.

"And then I would have two or three weeks. It was like a reprieve," she said. "That cycle went on until he got married, and that was in 2017."

Oakes said she told Higdon that she wouldn't have sex with him anymore after he got married. She wanted a friendly co-parenting relationship that didn't involve sex, she said.

But in early July 2017, he told her she couldn't date or talk to other men.

"I just wanted to have a co-parenting relationship with him and to have my own life," she said.

On July 10, 2017, they had an encounter that terrified Oakes.

The two met to talk about their daughter, and she told him she wanted a co-parenting relationship and that she didn't want to have sex with him.

"His body language was changing and he was getting angry," she said from the witness stand.

She got up to leave, and he asked for her phone, she said. When she said no, she said he slammed her to the floor and took her phone and went upstairs.

She tried to get her phone back, and they wrestled for it, but Oakes said she gave up and started to leave. Then he stopped her and said he'd give her the phone back, but instead of giving it back, he opened it and started reading her messages. Something in it made him angry, "and then he pushed me down the stairs. I fell down almost the full flight of stairs."

He followed her down, Oakes said, and beat her, punching her multiple times in the stomach, slapping her in the face, strangling her, grabbing her by the hair and slamming her head against the wall.

"I was scared for my life," Oakes said, speaking at times through tears. "I didn't know what he was going to do."

At one point, she said, he went to the kitchen and held a butcher knife to his chest, telling her, "this is where you have brought me," she said.

He told her "he would hurt every person I loved before he hurt me… His eyes were black. He had no emotion whatsoever on his face. He just looked evil."

Afterward, Oakes went to a local police department, but police said there was nothing they could do since she had left his house. An officer told her she could go to the magistrate's office and take out warrants for his arrest or simply choose to set boundaries and never speak to him alone again. She chose the latter path.

The next morning, working with her therapist, she composed a message to him again saying she loved him, but what had happened could never happen again. She said if it did, she would get a restraining order.

While she was at work, she received a phone call from her mother: Police had come to her house and said there were warrants for her arrest on charges of breaking and entering and assault with a deadly weapon. Higdon, she said, had gone to the magistrate's office and sworn out warrants on her. Oakes, who at the time was covered in bruises, turned herself in with the aid of an attorney and immediately posted a bond, so she did not spend any time in jail.

Higdon also asked a judge for a restraining order, preventing Oakes from seeing their daughter for 10 days.

On the afternoon of July 23, Higdon picked up their daughter from her house. Then, sometime later, he came back, she said.

As she hid, Oakes said, Higdon broke in. When she heard glass break, she hid in her car, all the while on the phone with the Mount Holly Police Department. Shortly thereafter, she spotted smoke coming from her bedroom window.

One of her cats, Rex, made it outside. Spike and Barney were found in the house, dead.

She later buried them in her backyard.

Higdon was pulled over and arrested shortly after driving off.

Higdon admitted to jurors that he went to the house, but he denied the other allegations. In his opening statement, he characterized himself as "a man of faith," who had always wanted to have a family. He argued that the fact that he posted a bond and was released from jail after his arrest is evidence of his innocence.

"If I've done any of this, how am I standing in front of you today? I'm not incarcerated," he said. "You're going to find that I didn't set her house on fire."

This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: Mount Holly woman describes violent encounters with ex