MUNCIE, IN — A Yorktown man previously convicted of beating his ex-girlfriend and her grandmother has now been accused of attacking his 76-year-old mother.
Randall Walter Lennis, 48, was arrested on Monday, July 20, on suspicion of battery resulting in moderate bodily injury and interference with the reporting of a crime.
According to an affidavit, his mother reported Lennis, who she believed was intoxicated, began pounding and kicking on her locked bedroom door about 3 a.m. Monday.
When she opened the door, the woman told Yorktown police, Lennis “punched her three times in the face with a closed fist,” knocking her glasses off.
When he punched her a fourth time, the court document said, the woman fell backward into a bathtub, pulling a shower curtain and curtain rod down on top of her. She also struck the back of her head against the tub.
As she tried to get out of the tub, the woman told police, Lennis punched her twice more in the face.
As she tried to gain access to her cell phone to call for help, she said, her son grabbed onto both of her wrists, causing “bruising, abrasions and open cuts to (the woman’s) forearms,” an officer wrote.
He then took her phone, “snapped it in half, and threw it into a trash can in a different room,” the affidavit said.
Lennis left the Yorktown home when a friend arrived “to transport Randall to get his medication and take him to the hospital,” according to the court document.
His mother drove to a local rehabilitation center, where she called for help.
An officer reported that the six blows to the woman’s face struck her in the left cheek and mouth, resulting in “significant swelling” and “noticeable bruising.” She also had a small bump on the back of her head and dried blood and bruising on her left ear.
The Delaware County prosecutor’s office will determine whether formal charges will be filed over Monday’s events.
In April 2018, then-Delaware Circuit Court 1 Judge Marianne Vorhees found Lennis, then 40, guilty of aggravated battery, domestic battery resulting in serious bodily injury, attempted strangulation and invasion of privacy.
Testimony indicated Lennis, highly intoxicated at the time, punched his former girlfriend, who was 28, in the face and knocked her down after being delivered to her grandmother’s south-side Muncie home in a taxi.
The ex-girlfriend’s grandmother, then 76, suffered brain bleeds after she was repeatedly struck in the head with a lamp.
The Yorktown man was released from prison in 2024, according to state Department of Correction records.
Douglas Walker is a news reporter at The Star Press. Contact him at 765-213-5851 or at dwalker@muncie.gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: Yorktown man with violent past accused of attacking his mother
Reporting by Douglas Walker, Muncie Star Press / Muncie Star Press
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By Douglas Walker, Muncie Star Press | USA TODAY Network
