WATERTOWN — A verbal exchange over litter being dropped on the ground at a convenience store Tuesday escalated into a serious confrontation about an hour later at a pizza shop in which a teenager allegedly injured two people by striking them with a machete, according to court documents.
Shayquan J. Bullocks, 18, of 318 Waltham St., upper apartment, is charged by city police with first- and second-degree assault, both felonies, as well as two misdemeanor counts of fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon.
It is alleged that at about 3:30 p.m. Tuesday in the area of Little Caesars, 420 State St., he struck Joshua Larkins, 30, Watertown, in the head with a machete, causing a deep laceration above Larkins’s right eye, resulting in a serious and protracted disfigurement and loss of function to the eye.
Larkins was flown for treatment to Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, where police said he was in serious condition, but stable.
It is further alleged that during the incident, Bullocks struck Larkins’s fiancee, Katrina Dusharm, 31, with the machete on her head and right hand, causing a cut to her head that required staples to close and damaging a tendon in her hand. She was treated at Samaritan Medical Center and released.
According to supporting depositions filed with City Court, Dusharm, Larkins and a third person who was helping Larkins remodel his house, Joshua D. Ortlieb, were parked in Larkins’s pickup truck in the lot at the Stewart’s Shops at North Massey and Coffeen streets at about 2:35 p.m. when they observed a male throw garbage on the ground as he waited to cross Coffeen Street.
“The windows in the truck were down and we all yelled out, hey scumbag pick up your trash,” Ortlieb told police in his deposition. “He said come and make me and someone in the truck said that they were going to call the cops.”
Dusharm told police the male “pulled his pants down like he was going to take out a weapon” before walking away and turning onto Waltham Street.
About an hour later, the trio was in the drive-thru at Little Caesars when the male came up to the driver’s side of the truck, which Dusharm was driving.
“While sitting at the drive through, Katrina said hey look its (sic) the guy,” Ortlieb said in the deposition. “I said that’s the guy from Stewart’s. It was the same dude wearing the same outfit and hairdo.”
Ortlieb said the male walked up to the truck and said “what are you going to do about it now, I’m right here.” He said the male, later identified as Bullocks, “started calling us names and called Katrina four eyes.” Bullocks then walked away from the truck, but Dusharm got out of the vehicle and said, “I’m out of the truck now, what are you going to do about it.”
“The guy walked up to Katrina and started whaling on her,” Ortlieb said. “Josh and I were still sitting in the truck and I told Josh that his woman was getting beat up. I could see blood on Katrina’s head.”
Larkins then jumped from the truck and began fighting with Bullocks as Dusharm was lying on the ground. Ortlieb said he saw Bullocks with something in his hand with a black handle.
He said he grabbed a torque wrench and went out to the front of the pizza shop, where he saw Bullocks running toward Midtown Towers on Mechanic Street.
As he was running toward the apartment building, police arrived and yelled for him to drop the wrench, which he did.
According to a statement filed by Police Detective Matthew Preedom, two responding officers said Bullocks approached them as he was being chased by Ortlieb. Both men were detained and a machete was found on Bullocks after an officer saw him tuck something in his waistband.
The statement indicates that Bullocks acknowledged there had been a verbal dispute between himself and the three others at Stewart’s and that after the argument Bullocks “went to his house and grabbed a machete because he was walking across the city and wanted it for self-defense in case he came in contact with the group again.”
The detective’s statement said that Larkins had gone to help Dusharm and put his hands on Bullocks, but when he saw the machete he ran toward State Street.
There was an uninvolved person walking his dog on State Street and Bullocks thought Larkins was running toward the other person for protection.
Bullocks chased after Larkins and caught up to him on the sidewalk, where he allegedly struck him in the face and head with the machete, according to the statement.
Bullocks told the detective that both Larkins and Dusharm were “empty handed” when they came at him and that he had chased and struck Larkins with the machete “because he put hands on him.”
Bullocks, a student at Watertown High School, was arraigned Wednesday in City Court and ordered held at the Metro-Jefferson Public Safety Building without bail.
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