Police accused a 60-year-old woman of stabbing her 62-year-old husband to death on Sunday in his Central City apartment.
Roxie Scott told New Orleans Police Department detectives that her husband, Gregory Scott, had been striking her when she fought back with a kitchen knife in his apartment in the 1700 block of South Rampart Street on Sunday.
Police alleged that she swiped at her husband twice with the blade, stabbing him in the neck, then fled, leaving him to die in "a large amount of blood," according to the affidavit for the arrest warrant.
The next day, police came to Gregory Scott's apartment in response to a call of an unclassified death. They found him dead in an apartment streaked with pools and trails of blood, according to the documents. Roxie Scott initially denied seeing her husband on Sunday, but admitted to stabbing him, police said. She was not injured.
Police booked Roxie Scott into Orleans Justice Center Thursday on second-degree murder, where she is being held on a $500,000 bond.
A troubled partnership
The Scotts married in 2009. Gregory Scott was self-employed, and Roxie Scott was disabled, according to a petition for divorce filed in Civil District Court in 2018. They took turns caring for a special needs Yorkie.
On Aug. 19 2012, Gregory Scott was arrested for aggravated battery. A petition for protection from abuse filed by Roxie Scott on Aug. 22, 2012 alleges Gregory punched, shoved, kicked, stalked and threatened her life. She said he had been "constantly abusive," and that he hit her in the head with a hammer when she refused to let him move back in with her in August 2012, leading to her hospitalization.
Those charges were later refused, as were Gregory Scott's 2021 charges: two counts of domestic abuse battery. The circumstances around that incident aren't clear.
Uptick in domestic violence
In May, New Orleans police responded to 415 domestic violence calls—the most in a month this year, which has seen 2,010 domestic violence incidents so far.
Domestic violence advocates are seeing an increase in the both the number and severity of attacks, according to city council vice president Helena Moreno, who is working with the Health Department and New Orleans Family Justice Center to increase funding for services for victims of domestic violence.
But the cycle can be hard to break.
"Sometimes in domestic violence, it takes 7-10 times before a survivor decides to leave an abusive relationship," said Misty Frye, associate director of the New Orleans Family Justice Center. She urged survivors of domestic abuse to call the center's 24-hour hotline at (504) 866-9554 to be connected to counseling, emergency shelter, forensic nursing and more.
