Drunken Salem man batters 3

By: 
Staff Writer Kate Wehlann

Gary Lathem, Jr., 20, Salem, was arrested on Thursday, Nov. 7, after three women claimed he harmed them while angry and drunk.

Salem Police Officers Tyler Gregory and Chris Cauble and Sheriff’s Deputy Brad Naugle found Lathem laying on the floor in front of an Aspen Drive apartment with bloody knuckles and a cut over his right eye. He was intoxicated to the point where he couldn’t stand on his own and officers helped him to his feet and down the stairs.

Gregory stayed with Lathem and Cauble returned to speak with the three women claiming to have been battered.

One said he had been drinking and got upset when she was on the phone with one of her friends. She said he punched her in the leg, threw her to the ground and then urinated on her. She had a bruise to her right shoulder.

Another woman said Lathem then threw her against a neighbor’s car. She had pain in her right side and cuts and scrapes on her arms and hands.

The third woman said Lathem pushed her into a pole while she was carrying her 16-month-old baby.

“She stated that he kept saying he was gonna make sure he was going to jail,” Cauble said in his report.

The women said they all went back inside the apartment and locked the door to keep him out. They said he was attempting to break the door down.

The officers put Lathem in restraints, but Lathem kept twisting away and pulling his arms away. Cauble said he only stopped resisting when he was told he would be tased if he continued.

Cauble administered a portable breath test and Lathem blew a .158. He was taken to the Washington County Detention Center and charged with battery by bodily waste, three counts of battery, resisting law enforcement, public intoxication and illegal consumption of alcohol.

This isn’t Lathem’s first run-in with law enforcement for alcohol-related charges. In August, he was arrested for public intoxication, illegal consumption of an alcoholic beverage by a minor and resisting law enforcement. In November 2018, he was also arrested for illegal consumption.

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