STARKE—A 50-year-old Starke man was sentenced to five years in prison after his original denial of felony battery collapsed due to a spaghetti stain on his shorts.
Calbren Leon Bennett was arrested on July 16 for felony battery and pleaded to the offense on Sept. 6, in addition to a probation violation.
According to an arrest report, the victim told deputies Bennett came to her front porch claiming the two needed to talk about an event that occurred two days prior.
“I have been drinking, and you have been drinking. I don’t want you here,” replied the victim, wrote Deputy Wyatt Konkel in the report.
Konkel added that the victim said Bennett followed her back into the home, stopping at a doorway and repeating, “We need to talk.”
When the woman refused, Bennett grabbed a plate of spaghetti from the victim’s lap and hurled it against a wall.
He then pinned the woman against a bed using both of his hands.
“(The victim) tucked her legs underneath herself and pushed Calbren down on the ground using her legs,” wrote Konkel. “(She) got up and got in Calbren’s face and told him to leave multiple more times.”
The defendant then left.
Konkel wrote that he questioned Bennett at his home off County Road 100A near the Clay County line.
Bennett initially claimed he had been at his house all day. When Konkel asked him about a bruise on his arm, the defendant replied that he fell off a ladder.
“I asked Calbren if he dropped food on him due to him having what looked like spaghetti sauce on his shorts,” Konkel reported, “but Calbren didn’t answer the question.”
The defendant then confessed to being at the woman’s home.
“Calbren stated that it was just “two drunk people being stupid,” Konkel wrote. “Calbren stated that (the victim) gets violent sometimes, and that’s how he got the mark on his elbow.”
When the deputy asked Bennett if he went inside the woman’s home, the defendant initially said no, but later said yes.
“When he was asked about the plate being thrown inside the residence,” the deputy wrote, “Calbren stated that (the victim) is the one that threw the plate, not him.”
Bennett
