Woman Held in Boyfriend’s Stabbing

An Arkansas woman was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of slitting her boyfriend’s throat and stabbing him in the chest with a pocket knife, Ventura police said.

Linda J. Tome, 40, of Searcy, Ark., was being held on $20,000 bail in Ventura County Jail, authorities said.

She is suspected of assaulting her live-in boyfriend, 41-year-old Robert Bradley, also of Arkansas, during a 4 a.m. fight Tuesday in the 900 block of West Main Street in Ventura, Police Sgt. George Morris said.

Bradley was treated at Community Memorial Hospital for a 4-inch-deep chest wound and received 30 stitches for a 5-inch laceration to his neck, Morris said. He was released from the hospital later Tuesday.

Tome and Bradley were traveling through the area in a tractor-trailer rig when they pulled off the Ventura Freeway for the night, Morris said.

Bradley “had lied down to go to sleep, and that’s when [Tome] started causing a commotion outside the truck,” said Morris, noting that both people had been drinking before the dispute. “He went out to calm her down, and when he did she started slashing at him.”

The couple’s two children, ages 6 and 10, were asleep in the truck during the incident. Because neither parent could immediately care for the children, they were taken into custody by Child Protective Services, Morris said.