911 call: S. Jersey woman beat husband to death with fire extinguisher after he attacked her
"He's just laying there," Laciana Tinsley, 42, said, pleading for emergency responders to hurry. "I think I hit him too many times."
A Willingboro woman accused of beating her husband to death with a fire extinguisher said she hit him after he tried to smother her with a pillow and she got free, according to a recording of the call provided by Burlington County officials Wednesday.
"I just kept beating him in the head, because he kept trying to get up and come after me," Laciana Tinsley, 42, said in the Jan. 30 call from the Hancock Lane home she shared with her husband, Douglas, 74.
Tinsley has been charged with murder and unlawful possession of a weapon. In the call, she said her husband "just went off," though she does not say why.
"He's just laying there," Tinsley said in a distraught voice, pleading for emergency responders to hurry. "I think I hit him too many times."
When the dispatcher asked Tinsley whether her husband was conscious, she responded, "I don't know. It's like I blacked out."
Tinsley told the dispatcher that her husband's body was near a sofa, and that he was bleeding badly.
"In his face," Tinsley said. "Because I kept hitting him in the head, and he kept trying to get back up, and I just had to keep hitting him."
Tinsley's public defender, Karen Thek, said Wednesday that Tinsley had been the victim of domestic violence.
"Obviously, this is a self-defense case," Thek said.
Thek requested during a hearing in Superior Court in Mount Holly on Tuesday that a judge give Tinsley home detention with a monitoring bracelet. Instead, Judge Thomas P. Kelly ordered that Tinsley be held in jail pending a trial.
Tinsley has no previous criminal record, Thek said.
"She's been a victim multiple times," Thek said, referring to the alleged domestic violence. "She has nothing — no criminal history. Who is she a danger to?"