West Des Moines Police Untangle New Twist on Stranger Danger

are still sorting out what happened in a weekend fight between a couple of women at a Valley Junction address where one of them had been living.

There's no dispute that the fight occurred. What's at issue is whether the alleged assailant hit the alleged victim, who claimed to be four months' pregnant, in the stomach.

She told police Officer Jacob Rolph that she had just gotten out of jail and had gone to the address about 1 a.m. Sunday to fetch her belongings from a basement room. She claimed her property had been “trashed,” and when she confronted the homeowner, he said he’d called the second woman and she was on her way to Valley Junction “to beat her up.”

She then claimed the second woman drove into the driveway where she was packing her car, “got out and punched her in the mouth.” The woman reportedly continued to hit her, despite the alleged victim’s pleas for her to stop because she was four months’ pregnant.

The alleged assailant reportedly “struck her in the stomach with a closed fist.”

The woman who said she’d been hit in the stomach told Rolph that she wasn’t having cramps and didn’t want to seek medical attention. The two women were strangers, she said.

Now, here’s another version of the alleged assault, from the property owner the first woman claimed had called the second woman to fight his battles:

It happened, he told Rolph, but not exactly as the first woman described.

The homeowner called the woman “a drifter,” said she “was possibly still on drugs” and had no belongings at the house and “no business” at his house.

He said the second woman showed up, but not because he’d called her. The first woman was “running her mouth” and the two women engaged into an altercation. Though the second woman did reportedly strike the first in the mouth, the alleged victim “egged it on” and allegedly said, “Is that all you got?”

The homeowner said he heard the first woman announce that she was pregant. According to the report, the homeowner said his friend “would never have struck her in the stomach after she said this.”

At Rolph’s direction, the alleged victim moved her property and waited for a friend to give her a ride to the address she was staying at in Des Moines. She was unable to give Rolph an exact address, but said it’s near a library.