A 42-year-old Ruston man was arrested early Aug. 29 after police said he punched his girlfriend in the head inside a Ruston hospital emergency room while she waited to be admitted.
Fredrick Johnson was booked into the Lincoln Parish Detention Center on one count of domestic abuse battery, according to an affidavit.
A Ruston police officer was dispatched at about midnight to the hospital in the 400 block of East Vaughn Avenue in reference to a domestic abuse complaint.
The woman told the officer she was inside the emergency room speaking with hospital personnel about being admitted when her boyfriend, later identified as Johnson, walked in and asked her how long the process was going to take. When she did not answer him, she said, Johnson struck her with his fist on the right side of her head, directly behind her ear.
Emergency room staff and a witness who saw the incident gave statements consistent with the woman’s account.
Johnson was found a short time later sitting on a bench in the hospital parking lot. He was advised of his Miranda rights, placed under arrest at 12:31 a.m., handcuffed and transported to the detention center.
This information has been provided by a law enforcement agency as public information. Persons named or shown in photographs or video as suspects in a criminal investigation, or arrested and charged with a crime, have not been convicted of any criminal offense and are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
