Family Violence Trial Features Man Facing His 28th Criminal Case

James Ray Parker has logged 39 entries into the Tom Green County Jail and racked up 28 local criminal cases. Sex crimes, drugs, drunk driving and theft form a series of misdemeanor and felony offenses that spans over three decades.

On Monday, the 50-year-old Grape Creek man appeared before yet another Tom Green County jury, this time for the alleged assault and knife-drawn death threats made against his sister, Vickie Parker.

A split jury of six men and six women heard evidence in the trial on Aug. 17, beginning with public safety dispatcher Karen Bloss, who set the timeline of the incident as March 18, 2013 at roughly 10:57 p.m.

“My mother-in-law just showed up at the house and her brother lives with her,” Vickie Parker’s son-in-law Joshua Hewitt told the dispatcher over a recording. “And he beat her and threatened her with a knife.”

“She had dirt all over her; her eye was severely red: You could see where someone had hit her, it was so red,” the victim’s daughter added during her testimony. “She was frantic. She was crying; she was upset, and she just kept crying.”

Lacie Hewitt explained to the jury that her mother had shown up at her Grape Creek home that night distraught, exclaiming that she and her brother, James Parker, had been involved in an altercation and that Parker had pulled a knife on her in the living room and threatened to take her life. When she fled to the porch, she told her daughter, Parker pushed her down the stairs on the front porch and hit and kicked her repeatedly.

James Parker had not been living with his sister, Vickie, for very long, Joshua Hewitt testified, just “since he got out of jail”. Hewitt told the jury that he had seen the bruises on Vickie’s back and face when she appeared on his doorstep that night and saw that she had a significant amount of blood pooled in the white of her right eye.

After Hewitt had dialed 911, members of the Grape Creek Volunteer Fire Department, a medic and three sheriff’s deputies arrived on scene. Vickie was transported to the hospital. When she was discharged at roughly 2 a.m., the family again called dispatch, this time requesting that an officer meet the at the Parker residence on Caribou Lane to ensure that Parker was no longer present. He was located hiding behind a bed in the house.

Parker remained studious as witnesses gave testimony, jotting down notes on a yellow legal sheet as he sat next to court-appointed counsel, Jimmy Stewart.

“…he said that he never hit Vickie,” responding Deputy Joshua Criddle testified on Monday. “[He said] that she hit herself and was hitting herself on a fence post. He was talking very fast and was bouncing from one subject to another.”

Parker pled not guilty to the first-degree felony charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon on a family member on Monday, but his niece’s husband said that he wasn’t surprised to hear about the violence that occurred on March 18, 2013.

He recalled an incident roughly one week before the March 18 assault during which he had dropped off his wife at her mother’s house and saw James Parker in front of the residence he shared with his sister. The two had been in an argument, Hewitt testified, and he recalled hearing Parker say, “…if this happened again and he went back to jail because of her, he was going to do it the right way and just kill her.”

Parker was not arrested the night of the alleged assault, but was sent away from the property he and Vickie shared, while she went to stay at her daughter’s house roughly a block away.

“We tried to go to sleep that night,” Lacie Hewitt testified. “It was real hard because we didn’t know where he had went and if he was going to try to come to my house.”

The trial of James Ray Parker will continue on Tuesday morning at 9 a.m. in 51^st District Judge Barbara Walther’s courtroom. John Best, 51^st Assistant District Attorney, is prosecuting the case; Jimmy Stewart is defending.

Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon of a family member is a first-degree felony punishable by five to 99 years in prison and a fine not to exceed $10,000.