BC man gets prison time for 2nd attack on wife

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Photo: Mark Raymond Fidler

A Baxter County man who attacked his wife twice over her refusal to give him money was back in Baxter County Circuit Court Tuesday.

Fifty-six-year-old Mark Raymond Fidler was sentenced to four years in prison after entering a guilty plea to charges stemming from the second attack.

Fidler was first arrested in late December 2018 when he allegedly became angry at his wife for not giving him funds to purchase methamphetamine, according to court records.

A Baxter County deputy who answered the initial call said Fidler’s wife had a large bleeding lump on the side of her forehead.

When Fidler appeared on the initial charge, his wife made an emotional plea for leniency. She said the couple had been together 30 years. She told the court tensions between them had grown since moving to Arkansas. She said her husband “dragged me down here,” and she disliked being isolated and “living in the woods.”

She said because of the tension, tempers often flared.

Another argument over money in early June resulted in the second set of charges against Fidler. He was alleged to have come to the home he had once shared with his wife along County Road 74, where he asked for money and was again refused.

As with the original attack, the wife said her husband became angry when she did not provide the money he wanted. She reported he shoved and hit her on the right side of her head and face. She told a Baxter County deputy sheriff she had gone into a bedroom, put a dresser in front of the door and called 911.

As in the first attack, a highly intoxicated Fidler also fled the home in a vehicle following the early June confrontation. He was found driving on County Road 73. He refused to stop and the deputy reported Fidler was driving back and forth across the road from ditch-to-ditch, almost wrecking several times.

The vehicle’s engine finally died. The deputy said Fidler had to be pulled from the truck and then tased to get him on the ground.

The deputy said Fidler was exhibiting a number of signs of intoxication, including slurred speech and red, watery eyes.

The second attack resulted in a revocation petition being filed in the first domestic battery case. Fidler had three years of his 10-year probation sentence revoked in August and was to serve his time in the state prison system. He is an inmate at the Ouachita River Unit of the Arkansas prison system. The sentence handed down Tuesday will run concurrently with his current sentence.

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