Richard Joseph Gardner, 39, Greenfield
Richard Joseph Gardner, 39, Greenfield
HANCOCK COUNTY — A violent encounter between a man and a woman in early December has landed the Greenfield man in serious trouble, according to officials from the Indiana State Police, who sent the case to the Hancock County Prosecutor’s office.
Richard Joseph Gardner, 39, 2700 block of East CR 625N has been charged with a Level 4 felony count of kidnapping, four different Level 6 felony counts of confinement, domestic battery and strangulation as well as three different Class A misdemeanor counts of domestic battery.
Gardner made an initial appearance in Hancock County Circuit Court on December 28. Judge Scott Sirk set a cash bond of $7,500 and put a no contact order with firearms restrictions in place. Gardner has since bonded out of the county jail, but does have a pretrial conference slated for February 1.
According to a probable cause affidavit filed by an official from the Indiana State Police, a patrolman was dispatched for a domestic battery report at the IU Methodist Saxony Hospital, 13000 E 136th Street in Fishers on December 9.
That’s where a patrolman found a Fishers woman in the emergency room who had bruising on her neck and face, the report stated. The woman told the patrolman her boyfriend, Gardner, who lives in Greenfield, and she got in a fight after he had returned to his Greenfield home intoxicated December 8.
According to the affidavit, the woman said she threw his cell phone onto the ground, breaking it, and then Gardner grabbed her by the hair and dragged her to the backyard where he hit her in the face. After the two went back into the house, the woman told the patrolman she tried to get her things to leave, but Gardner repeatedly threw her on the ground and would not let her leave while continuing to batter her.
Gardner, the woman noted in the report, eventually fell outside through an open back door after their continued fighting. That allowed the woman to lock the door, she told the official. Gardner, who had a key to the house, re-entered the home and again threw the woman to the ground, the report stated.
Gardner is then accused of taking a broken clipboard and pressing the edge of it into the woman’s throat, the affidavit said. He then started strangling her until she was able to bite him and get away, the report said. The woman told the patrolman she felt Gardner was going to kill her before she was able to escape.
The patrolman noted in the report that the woman had bruising to both legs, both arms, neck, back, face, had a bite mark on her thumb and her hair was matted and tangled. She told the patrolman she went to the hospital because she was having difficulty breathing due to being strangled.
The woman also noted this wasn’t the first time Gardner had beaten her, but that she had been abused four other times since she had started dating him in March 2023, the report stated.
When officials talked with Gardner, he told them it was the woman who was “out of control” and that she was not his girlfriend but rather someone he occassionally “hung-out” with, the report stated. Gardner told officials he was trying to kick her out of his home, she had broken his cell phone and that caused the two to get into a fight.
Gardner insisted, the report stated, that it was the woman who was the aggressor and that she had punched him in the testicles and in the eye, starting the fight.
Gardner told officials he and the woman did fight and he got her in what he called a “chin whip” but only to hold her until she calmed down. He also told officials both he and the woman had been drinking prior to the incident. Gardner also stated the woman had been the instigator in their prior incidents as well, and that she had threatened to get him arrested before.
