WILLINGBORO TWP. — A distraught Laciana Tinsley told a 911 dispatcher that she thought she hit her husband “too many times” in the head with a fire extinguisher because he was attacking her and kept coming.
“Please send somebody because he looks so still,” she said.
Tinsley, 42, of Hancock Lane in Willingboro, is charged with murder in the Jan. 30 death of Douglas Tinsley, 74, though she told authorities her actions were self defense.
A shortened version of her 911 call, provided by Burlington County officials, is below.
“My husband, he was smothering me with a pillow,” she told the dispatcher. She said she got free and grabbed a fire extinguisher. “I just kept beating him in the head because he kept trying to get up and come after me.”
She later said her husband had tried to sexually assault her and hit her with a chair.
Asked how many times she hit him and if he was conscious, she said she didn’t know. “It’s like I blacked out,” she said.
She repeatedly asked for emergency personnel to come quickly. The call lasted seven minutes until police arrived at her home. Emergency medical services were on standby, according to the dispatcher.
Homicides, guns on the rise in Willingboro
Tinsley’s son, Karel Rue, 25, told reporters outside a Burlington County Courtroom Tuesday that his mother left Douglas Tinsley several times during their marriage to stay in a women’s shelter because he was violent.
Social workers helped her and her daughter get an apartment about a year ago, Rue said, but Tinsley apparently went back to her husband later in 2016.
The prosecutor’s office has not directly refuted Tinsley’s version of events at the house, but Assistant Prosecutor Danny Ljungberg said in a detention hearing Tuesday that no one was at the house to witness what transpired and Tinsley admitted to police that she beat her husband with the fire extinguisher.
Tinsley, who has no criminal history, was ordered held pending trial.
Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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