Staff photo / Ed Runyan Justine E. Bissell, 54, of North Lima, right, pleaded guilty to felony aggravated assault and felony assault this week in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court in an Aug. 4 incident at a home in Beaver Township. Her attorney is Rhys Cartwright Jones.

YOUNGSTOWN — Justine E. Bissell, 54, of North Lima, pleaded guilty Wednesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court to two felony charges related to an Aug. 4 incident at a home in Beaver Township in which police said she stabbed her domestic partner with scissors.

Bissell pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated assault for that offense and one count of assault for her actions toward a police officer. She could get about three years in prison when she is sentenced at 10:30 a.m. Feb 19. Visiting Judge W. Wyatt McKay presided over Bissell’s case on behalf of Judge R. Scott Krichbaum.

THE INCIDENT

According to Beaver Township police, officers were dispatched to the home at 9:35 p.m. Aug. 4 for an unknown problem. The address and street name of the incident were blacked out in the report under Ohio’s Marsy’s Law, which protects the identity of victims. Bissell has an address on Woodworth Road in North Lima, according to court records.

The report states that when a Beaver Township officer arrived, officers from Springfield Township were there, and they advised they saw blood on the kitchen floor, but no one inside responded to verbal notifications that the police were there and knocking on the door.

Because of a history of domestic violence at the home and the Beaver Township officer’s observations, he kicked open the door and got inside, seeing blood on the floor, walls and furniture. He found Bissell on a couch in the living room and a man sitting on the floor beside the couch with blood on his head, wrists and neck.

Bissell told the officer she stabbed the man in self-defense. She was unable to describe the method in which she was attacked, the report states.

She told the officer the man was not supposed to be there because of a protection order, but that turned out to be false, the officer reported. The man was taken in an ambulance for medical care, and Bissell was arrested.

She also kicked the Beaver officer in the groin area, grabbed the equipment on his belt and resisted arrest, the report states.

Bissell was taken to the hospital to be checked out before she went to jail and continued to resist, biting one officer on the finger at the hospital, the report states.

At the hospital, the victim said he had come home with a bottle of vodka, and Bissell drank a lot of it. A short time later, Bissell got angry and began trying to stab him in the neck, but she only caused a small cut. He fought her off, but she made contact with his eye, he said.