Wife Who Bit Cheating Ex Loses Assault Appeal

(CN) - A woman who sank her teeth into her soon-to-be ex-husband as they struggled over the gun she kept in her purse was properly convicted of assault, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled.

After several separations, Nacoma Kulowiec filed to divorce his wife of nine years, Ewelina Mrozik Kulowiec, and the couple met to go over the paperwork for those proceedings in September 2011.

Nacoma, a U.S. Air Force reservist, had been seeing another woman, and had a child with this woman for several years, but he and Ewelina apparently never discussed the issue until this encounter.

Ewelina had driven 2 1/2 hours from her home in Maryland to meet Nacoma at a Burger King on the U.S. Air Force base in Dover, Del., but security blocked her entry because her military identification had expired.

Having moved to a nearby hotel parking lot, Nacoma said Ewelina grilled him about his infidelity and aimed a gun at his head to get the answers she wanted.

Ewelina testified on the other hand that she kept the gun in her purse for protection and that Nacoma saw it and grabbed it. In any event, a struggle for the gun ensued in which Ewelina bit her husband several times.

A judge in Kent County ultimately acquitted Ewelina of aggravated menacing, terroristic threatening and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.

She was convicted, however, of third-degree assault since the court ruled that "the biting was admitted and clearly caused physical injury."

On appeal, Ewelina argued that she had not injured her husband enough to warrant an assault conviction, citing a 2009 opinion in Harris v. State.

In that case, the Delaware Supreme Court overturned a conviction of an assault on a police officer who was not in pain, not bruised and did not go to the hospital.

A three-judge panel of the Delaware Supreme Court concluded Tuesday, however, that Ewelina caused more damage than that.

"Nacoma testified that he was injured during the struggle with his wife," Justice Randy Holland wrote for the panel. "He described being bitten four times and described his wife as 'fighting like a man.' He stated that when he attempted to exit his car, his wife was biting his back such that 'she was still attached to my back near my shoulder.'"

The emergency-room report showed that, three hours after the incident, Nacoma still had several areas that were "red and inflamed," along with "bruising, abrasions, erythema and swelling around the human bite marks."

Delaware cited three other cases in which bite marks were shown to support a finding of physical injury.

The court upheld Ewelina's conviction and sentence of one year in prison, suspended for one year of probation.

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