A northwest Indiana man is in jail after allegedly dropping a TV on the head of a man he caught with his estranged wife in a Valparaiso motel room over the weekend.
William Smith, 46, is being held at the Porter County Jail for aggravated battery and domestic battery. Additional charges are expected to be announced Tuesday, and more may come depending on how the condition of the victim, Myron Burton, 48, changes.
Burton, of Pontiac, Ill., is at Porter hospital, according to Porter County Sheriff's Department Lt. Chris Eckert. The woman, Cora Smith, 44, of rural Valparaiso, also was treated at Porter for a broken arm.
Police are continuing to investigate what happened early Sunday in Cora Smith's room at the El-Kay Motel, at 53 W. U.S. 6, where she has been living since separating from William Smith.
According to police, William Smith, the couple's adult son and the son's girlfriend arrived at the motel around 1:30 a.m. Sunday. While the other two stayed outside, William Smith went to confront his wife, allegedly saying he was with the Valparaiso Police Department after knocking to get her to open the door.
"Whether he knew she was there with (Burton), we don't know," Eckert said.
Cora Smith told officers that as soon as her husband saw Burton, who also is William Smith's sister's husband, he pulled him off the bed and onto the floor, kicking and punching him. When she tried to call police on her cell phone, William Smith began hitting her and threw her to the ground as well, before returning to beat Burton again.
Then as the man lay injured on the floor, William Smith dropped the motel's television set on Burton's head and left.
When police arrived, Burton was laying naked on the floor, unconscious but breathing heavily, with a pool of blood under his head and the TV next to it. He had bruises and cuts on his torso and head, according to the police report.
William Smith was taken into custody "a very short time after," Eckert said.
He estimated that within an hour of the attack, Smith called his son and told him he was at an address on Heritage Road in South Haven. The son gave that information to police, and William Smith waited for officers to arrive.
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