HELMSBURG — A Brown County man has been charged with two misdemeanors after police say he physically fought with his neighbors after he had been drinking.
On May 19, Brown County Sheriff’s Deputy William Pool responded to a duplex in Helmsburg for a report of a fight in progress. He reported seeing three people on one porch and Ethan Halcomb, 26, on the other.
Pool wrote that he could tell Halcomb had been drinking. His speech was slurred, his balance was “uneasy” and he swayed back and forth, the report said.
Halcomb went inside his home while Pool spoke with his neighbors. The neighbors and a friend who was visiting said that Halcomb arrived home at about 11 p.m. from fishing. They said he seemed upset and was throwing beer cans. He then came to his neighbors’ porch and asked if they would give him a ride to Bloomington for $20. When they told him no, he began walking down the road, the report said.
One of his neighbors called Halcomb’s girlfriend and told her she needed to get home, the report said. When his girlfriend arrived, the two began to argue, and Halcomb threatened to beat everyone, the report said.
His neighbor told him to get off her property and Halcomb stepped onto her porch. He was yelling in her face and threatened to beat her multiple times. The neighbor then pushed him away and yelled at him to leave. According to the affidavit, Halcomb knocked his neighbor down on the concrete porch and hit her a few times in the face. Pool reported that children who lived with Halcomb were outside watching him.
Halcomb then turned to the other neighbor and threatened to beat him. That neighbor said he did not want to fight Halcomb with children present. Halcomb allegedly grabbed the other neighbor and pulled him off the porch. He then hit him three or four times in the right shoulder. The neighbor said he hit Halcomb twice in the chin to get him off, then walked back onto the porch as Halcomb continued to threaten to beat everyone, the report said.
When asked for his side of the story, Halcomb said “he wasn’t going to bother” because he “always goes to jail in the end anyways,” the report said.
Pool let Halcomb get a shirt, tell his girlfriend goodbye and smoke a cigarette before taking him to jail.
He was charged May 23 with two counts of battery resulting in bodily injury, Class A misdemeanors.
