Woman sentenced to two years

Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.

A 27-year-old local woman charged with battery was sentenced to prison early last week.
Ciara Yvette Lee, of Monticello, plead no contest to aggravated battery with a deadly weapon in court on Monday morning, Jan. 8.
Circuit Court Judge Dawn Caloca-Johnson accepted Lee's plea, adjudicated her guilty of the 2nd degree felony, and sentenced her to 24 months with the Florida Department of Corrections. The judge credited Lee with the 252 days that she had served in the county jail.
Assistant Public Defender Davis Revell represented Lee. Assistant State Attorney Andrew Deneen prosecuted the case.
See SENTENCE page 3
Lee was involved in a violent altercation with a female roommate over a cellphone on May 2 of last year.
According to the arrest report from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO), the deputy responding to the call of a stabbing in an apartment on Clark Avenue was flagged down by a woman with a bleeding left hand.
The woman, Sondra N. Macon, told the deputy that Lee had cut her over an argument that had started when she had refused let Lee see her cellphone.
As Macon related the incident, Lee cursed and shouted obscenities at Macon, and as the argument escalated, Lee ran to the kitchen, grabbed a serrated knife, and began “jabbing the knife toward Macon’s chest area.”
Macon said that she reached up to block the knife and got her left hand slashed, even as Lee continued to swing the knife.
Macon, according to the report, had a tendon-deep laceration on her middle finger, shallow cuts across her ring and pinky fingers, and cuts on her left hand, top and wrist. She was transported to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital for treatment.
Lee didn’t dispute that the argument had been over Macon’s cellphone, according to the report. But in her version of events, “Macon had slapped her several times and then walked into her bedroom.”
Lee told the deputy that she had sat down to eat lunch and some five minutes later, Macon had returned to the dining area.
Lee claimed that she feared Macon would slap her again so she stood up with the knife in a posturing stance. At which point, according to her version, Macon “gripped the knife, causing her to cut her own hand.”
Given the defensive nature of the cuts on Macon’s hand, however, the deputy arrested Lee for domestic aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.