A Saint Paul woman is accused of stabbing another woman twice with a kitchen knife during an argument in an apartment, according to a criminal complaint.
Monica Lasalle Duffie, 62, faces a felony count of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon. The complaint was filed Oct. 12 in Ramsey County District Court, and bail was set at $100,000.
According to the complaint, Saint Paul officers responded at about 10:31 p.m. Oct. 10 to an apartment in the 1000 block of Montreal Avenue, where a woman had reported being stabbed in the chest. Officers found her with two stab wounds on her left side and gave her first aid until medics took her to a hospital, where she had surgery.
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A man who lives in the apartment told police that three people were there that night, and that Duffie fell and her phone broke. He said Duffie accused the injured woman of breaking it on purpose, the two argued and Duffie grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed her. He said Duffie then handed him the knife, which officers later recovered from the apartment.
The injured woman told police Duffie had been drinking when she was invited to the apartment. She said Duffie got up and walked toward the door, then grabbed a knife from the kitchen, approached her and stabbed her twice. She later told an investigator that she dropped Duffie’s phone, breaking it, while trying to help her up after she fell, and she denied punching her, according to the complaint.
Officers went to Duffie’s apartment, but she refused to come out. They got a search warrant and arrested her.
Duffie told police she had been invited over for drinks and that the woman charged at her and punched her in the right eye, knocking her to the floor, and broke her phone. She said the two fought again before she went back to her own apartment. Asked whether she stabbed the woman, Duffie said she did not remember and had blacked out. “I didn’t want to do something like that to her. She attacked me,” she said, according to the complaint.
The complaint says Duffie had bruising above and below her right eye and a small cut on her upper lip.
The assault count carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison, a $14,000 fine or both, according to the complaint.
