Man Charged With Threatening to Slit Apple Valley Woman's Throat

A Minneapolis man has been charged with domestic assault and making terroristic threats after police say he threatened to slit a woman's throat if she called police to report their alleged violent argument in Apple Valley last week.

Leonard Warfield, 55, faces a felony charge of making terroristic threats, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. He also faces two charges of misdemeanor domestic assault, which have maximum penalties of 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.

According to the criminal complaint, Apple Valley police were called to an apartment complex in the 7400 block of 123rd Street Thursday on a report of a man and woman fighting in the building’s second-floor hallway.

A witness told police that Warfield had grabbed the woman and tried to pull her back into an apartment, the complaint says. Officers found the apartment door open, but no one inside, and they began searching outside the building.

As police came around the corner of a garage, they saw Warfield—who was “very intoxicated,” according to the complaint—run into the nearby woods. Police ordered him out of the woods and questioned him, and he said he did not know where the woman was, the complaint says.

Police found the woman a few minutes later returning to the apartment. She told police that she and Warfield had been in a relationship for about two years and that he had a “very violent history,” according to the complaint.

The woman told police she and Warfield had been playing a game of dice, and after she lost a bet, she and Warfield began arguing about Warfield cleaning up after himself when he visits her apartment, the complaint says.

She said she was sitting in a chair in her living room when Warfield allegedly grabbed her tightly around her neck with one hand. He then threw a small lemon juice bottle at her, hitting her in the head, the complaint says.

The woman said she took her cell phone out of her pants pocket, called 911 and slid the phone under a living room chair. At that point, the complaint says, Warfield became suspicious that she had called police, and allegedly told her that if the police showed up, he would slit her throat.

The woman said she tried to run out of the apartment, but Warfield grabbed her by her left arm and tried to drag her back inside, according to the complaint. She said she was able to break free and run to another apartment upstairs.

Warfield remains in the Dakota County Jail on a $70,000 bond. An omnibus hearing in his case is scheduled for Aug. 15 in Dakota County District Court in Hastings.

Warfield’s criminal record in Minnesota includes five convictions for assault, two of them domestic, and one for making terroristic threats.