Photo: Ellen Griesi
A Mountain Home woman charged with harassment and making death threats to several people, including a mother and son, has entered a guilty plea to reduced charges.
Fifty-six-year-old Ellen Griesi entered her plea to charges of second-degree terroristic threatening, harassing communications, resisting arrest and fleeing on foot, according to court records. All of the charges are Class A misdemeanors.
As part of the plea agreement, Griesi dropped an appeal of a case tried in district court in which she had been found guilty of misdemeanor harassment stemming from incidents in late October 2018. She had allegedly taken pictures of people and vehicles at a residence and then followed two male juveniles and tried to block their vehicle from leaving the parking lot of a local restaurant.
The findings of the district court will stand.
She was placed on one year misdemeanor probation.
According to the probable cause affidavit filed in her circuit court case, a neighbor of Griesi and her husband, Joseph, called police in mid-October 2018 to report a series of allegedly harassing telephone calls made to his home by Griesi.
The neighbor told police the harassment began shortly after he had called 911 to report a disturbance at the Griesi residence. He told police the next day Ellen Griesi called him wanting to know who had made a report on the alleged disturbance.
The victim told Griesi not to contact him again, but, according to court records, she allegedly began leaving threatening voice mails that the victim provided to police.
In late October, a female victim called to report a threat Griesi had made against her and her son. The victim said she arrived home and noticed a vehicle on the edge of her driveway. The victim said when she stepped out of her vehicle Griesi began yelling at her.
The victim alleged Griesi threatened “to shoot you in the face and kill your son.” She said she found a sympathy card on her vehicle’s windshield with the message, “It is tough for a mother to lose a child.”
On Oct. 30, 2018, Mountain Home Police went to Griesi’s residence to arrest her. When officers first made contact with Griesi, she ignored commands and attempted to flee into her residence.
She was caught by an officer, but continued to resist, wrestling, twisting and pulling away. She was eventually placed in handcuffs and take to the Baxter County Detention Center.
According to court records, Griesi and her husband filed 18 petitions for orders of protection against family members and others in 2018 and the first part of 2019. Many of the petitions contain the same 12-page, handwritten affidavit, outlining the reasons for seeking the orders.
In the lengthy and somewhat rambling affidavit, Griesi makes accusations against a number of people — even alleging the notary public whose stamp appears on some court papers is out to get her.
The petitions seeking orders of protection were all dismissed — 12 at the request of Griesi or her husband, three for failure to prosecute and three due to insufficient evidence.
Griesi was once an instructor at Arkansas State University-Mountain Home, but the school let her go. She has claimed she was also banned from attending the school as a student.
In one of the affidavits seeking an order of protection, Griesi said several people conspired to ruin her good name and to have her dismissed from her job.
Griesi has undergone a mental evaluation and was apparently found fit to proceed since activity in her cases continued.
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