Langley woman accused of power-tool assault

A Langley woman is accused of attacking her estranged husband with a circular saw, breaking his arm and cutting his face last month, according to court documents.

The woman, on the other hand, claims that she was the victim.

Prosecutors charged Dana K. McDonald, 52, in Island County Superior Court Jan. 31 with assault in the second degree, a domestic-violence crime. McDonald appeared in court Monday. The deputy prosecutor argued that she should be held on $20,000 bail because of the seriousness of the crime and her criminal history, which includes a conviction for unlawful possession of a firearm.

McDonald’s defense attorney, on the other hand, said she should be released on her personal recognizance to live with a friend.

Judge Alan Hancock set her bail at $5,000.

The alleged victim reported to police from the hospital Jan. 28 that McDonald had assaulted him at a home on Saratoga Road. The two had previously lived together and would regularly get into fights requiring law enforcement involvement, according to the deputy’s report on the incident.

The man reported that he and McDonald got into a fight because she had been evicted from the house and wasn’t supposed to be there. He said she picked up a circular saw, which apparently wasn’t turned on, and struck him on the head and arm, causing a serious laceration to his face and a fractured ulna.

In an interview with police, McDonald claimed that her husband had attacked her first with the power tool and that she pulled it from his hands and struck him in self defense. The deputy noted, however, that her injuries didn’t appear to match her story, the report states.

Four years ago, deputies arrested McDonald when she was chasing a hallucination around her neighbor’s yard while high on various drugs and armed with a handgun, court documents indicate.

A deputy allegedly caught her with a loaded .38-caliber revolver. She had previously been convicted of robbery in Hawaii, so she wasn’t eligible to possess a gun, the police report states.

The deputy found McDonald in the woods near the house, armed with a gun and claiming she was chasing her estranged husband and his girlfriend. While speaking with the deputy, McDonald repeatedly pointed in different directions and claimed that she could see her husband pointing a gun at them. The deputy looked and saw nothing.

McDonald admitted that she was “sleep deprived, intoxicated, had smoked marijuana and over-medicated with Oxycodone,” the deputy wrote.

Prior to the incident, McDonald’s husband had been arrested for allegedly firing a pistol near her head, court documents state.