NIAGARA COUNTY COURT
Falls man arraigned in domestic assault case
LOCKPORT — “I told you I was going to kill her,” a prosecutor said Eddie G. Knighton told his daughter after the girl’s mother, his companion of 28 years, was beaten to a pulp Aug. 17.
Deputy District Attorney Holly E. Sloma cited the daughter’s statement to police as Knighton, 44, of Niagara Falls, pleaded not guilty Friday in Niagara County Court during arraignment on charges of attempted murder, first-degree assault and third-degree criminal possession of a weapon.
Tina Harris, the victim, survived repeated blows with a heavy ceramic rock-shaped ashtray.
“Her ear was nearly ripped off,” Sloma told Judge Matthew J. Murphy III. A partial denture was smashed, and Harris suffered a broken arm and a dislocated thumb, Sloma said.
Amanda Knighton, 15, one of the couple’s two children, had visited her father in Niagara County Jail, where he was serving time on a criminal mischief conviction, and repeatedly heard him threaten to kill Harris “on the unsubstantiated belief that she was going to be with someone else,” Sloma said.
Three days after his release, Knighton is accused of breaking a window to enter Harris’ Willow Avenue home in Niagara Falls and attacking her.
Murphy set bail at $50,000 cash or $100,000 property, and imposed an order of protection to keep Knighton away from Harris, Amanda Knighton and another witness. The couple’s other child is 21.
At first, Assistant Public Defender Michael E. Benedict objected to including Amanda in the restraining order, because Sloma admitted the girl hadn’t specifically asked for protection from her father.
Then Knighton began crying and said: “Just do it. I don’t want my daughter involved in this.”
In another domestic violence case, a Niagara Falls woman took a plea deal Friday and agreed to point the finger at her boyfriend for beating her 3-year-old daughter.
Yeiline Torres, 20, of Packard Court, pleaded guilty to child endangerment, a misdemeanor, “by permitting Rondell Levick to strike the child repeatedly” between April 5 and 12, court papers said.
Levick, 20, of Elmwood Avenue, Niagara Falls, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree assault. The toddler wound up in Women’s and Children’s Hospital with bruises on her neck, arms, lower back and buttocks.
Torres agreed to testify against Levick. Judge Sara Sheldon Sperrazza scheduled Torres’ sentencing for Nov. 14.
Levick faces separate charges of first-degree assault and reckless assault on a child. He is accused of shaking his own 17-month-old son about Dec. 1, causing a brain injury.
