Background: The Tygart Valley Regional Jail and Correctional Facility (West Virginia Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation). Inset: Frank Victor Calvert Jr. (West Virginia Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation).
A man in West Virginia is accused of beating and strangling his girlfriend over a missing headlamp, forcing her to flee into the woods to escape him.
Frank Victor Calvert Jr., 48, is in the Tygart Valley Regional Jail and Correctional Facility on $75,000 bail, according to jail records reviewed by Law&Crime.
He has been charged with felony strangulation, WVNews reported.
On June 14, a West Virginia State Police trooper said a woman showed up at one of the agency's buildings in Preston County to report that she had been attacked by her boyfriend — Calvert — after having obtained a domestic violence protective order against him.
She alleged that at about 4 a.m. that day at a home on Ash Pole Road, Calvert got angry because he could not find a headlamp. She said she told him that he had been wearing it and that she never touched it, but her explanation only made him angry.
According to troopers, he hit her in the face, "pulled her around by the back of her hair and ripped hair out from the back of her head." He then reportedly put her in a chokehold.
The woman said she started suffocating and had to fight and beg Calvert "for a good while" to be let go, per WVNews. The defendant also allegedly squeezed her arm that had been recently injured — requiring surgery — after falling out of a moving vehicle when she was with him.
When Calvert let her look for the headlamp, she is said to have escaped by crawling outside and moving through the woods until she got to a neighbor's house. The trooper she spoke with said her injuries included red marks on her cheek and around her neck, as well as bruising around her collarbone.
Jail records show Calvert was arrested on Friday.
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