West Des Moines Police Investigate Fight Allegedly Starting Over Cigarettes, Ending in Drug Tip

A fight that started over a pack of cigarettes didn’t end when the alleged victim of the attack asked West Des Moines police to teach his former girlfriend a lesson.

The lesson may be his to learn. Police detectives are now invesigating her complaints that the fight wasn’t over the pack of smokes at all, but because, she claimed, she had overheard her former boyfriend and an acquaintance talking about a drug deal.

Police Officer Stephen Becker was called to a residence in the 1300 block of 42nd Plaza to investigate the fight, which started when the alleged assailant, a 21-year-old Urbandale woman, was unable to find her cigarettes.

She had been drinking with her former boyfriend, 34, and his friend. She thought they had taken them, according to the report, and when they were found under the cushions of the couch, “she still was not happy,” according to the report.

The former boyfriend, the resident of the apartment,  told Becker he wanted her to leave, but thought she was too intoxicated to drive, so he called her father. That apparently enraged her more, according to the report, and she allegedly hit him over the head with closed fists multiple times.

The man was uninjured, “but  … he wanted her to learn from this, as she cannot be hitting.” Becker wrote in his report. “He was persistent about police taking a report and said that his former girlfriend had been arrested on domestic assault before.”

That wasn’t the end of it.

The alleged assailant later called Westcom Dispatch to report drug activity, according to Becker’s report.

“She said she had been in another room of the apartment when she heard a conversation between the other two about transporting drugs from California to Iowa. She said that was what upset her former boyfriend ...  She denied having assaulted him.”

The case was assigned to detectives.