Jason Clark beat a woman over several hours and trashed her apartment in a jealous rage, even as he used a knife and threats of murder to keep police at bay Monday.
That’s according to depositions filed with Clark’s arrest and arraignment on charges related to the 10 hour standoff at 512 Cayuga St. in Fulton.
The depositions are from a woman and her mother, who both lived in the upstairs apartment on Cayuga St. that was the scene of the standoff. Police routinely do not name victims of domestic violence and neither will this article, though the names are on their statements and the statements are public documents.
Clark had recently gotten out of jail, the victim said. Just three weeks earlier, the victim got an order of protection against Clark, though the order did not prohibit all contact with the victim. It ordered Clark not to issue threats against the victim or to commit a range of crimes from assault and stalking to sexual abuse and intimidation. He had served a prison term of 2 to 4 years for a 2002 conviction on a charge of possessing a forged instrument.
Clark was living with the two women.
The woman told police the argument began at 10:30 or 11:00 p.m. on Sunday night. Her mother said Clark accused the woman of cheating on him. “Jason gets these ideas in his head,” the woman told police.
“It eventually escalated,” she said. “Jason got on top of me and started choking, he then put his fingers in my mouth and pulled my cheeks apart and I bit him.” She yelled to her mother to call 911, which she did. “Jason started choking me again to the pooint I passed out.”
The woman’s mother said Clark then came out of the bedroom and yanked the phone cord out of the wall while she was on the phone with the 911 Center.
Minutes later, they were all in the kitchen when Clark grabbed a black handled steak knife. “He said he was going to stab himself,” the victim’s mother said. “He said he was going to “die tonight”.”
Police arrive at this point. They knock on the door, but the victim’s mother said Clark would not let them go downstairs to open the door. “He then grabbed (the victim) and held her from behind with the knife up to the front of her throat,” the victim’s mother told police. “He yelled to the cops that if they came any closer he was going to “cut her throat”.”
The victim’s mother snuck down the stairs while this was going on and was able to escape. Police put her in the back seat of a patrol car to wait.
“I thought he was going to kill me,” the victim said. “I thought he was going to kill me when he was choking me. There’s a very fine line and I thought I was going to die.”
Police were trying to make contact with Clark during this time, while the Oswego County Sheriff’s Department SWAT team was arriving and taking up positions around the area.
The woman said Clark barricaded them inside the bedroom because he believed police were already in the house. She said he “was just destroying the bedroom”, breaking a box of dishes, punching holes in the wall, flipping the bed over and breaking the box springs.
She said that at one point, she was in the closet and Clark grabbed her head and slammed it into the wall twice. :My nose started gushing blood,” she told police.
“Jason was acting like Dr. Jeckle (sic) and Mr. Hyde,” she said. “At one point, he was yelling to the police he was going to kill me, then he was yelling for them to get cigarettes for me.”
She said Clark had entered what she called the “I’m sorry stage”, covering her with a blanket, telling her he loves her, while she was trying to gently convince him to talk to the police. But outside police officials had already decided that the time for talk was over.
At about 10:30 a.m., they fired several gas canisters into the home, rushed in and arrested Clark. By dinnertime, he was charged with several felonies.
Clark is in jail without bail.
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