Background: 1000 block of College Avenue in Bluefield, West Virginia (Google Maps) Inset: Badia Miller (West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation)
A West Virginia woman is accused of stabbing her ex-boyfriend with a “Rambo knife” after becoming incensed that he was communicating with other women.
Badia Miller, 51, of Bluefield, Mercer County, faces a felony charge of malicious assault and a misdemeanor charge of domestic battery. She has pleaded not guilty to both.
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A Bluefield Police Department patrol officer responded to a home on the 1000 block of College Avenue in the city on June 3 to a report of a stabbing, according to a criminal complaint. Once there, he found the victim, John Vineyard, standing in his living room “with a large knife wound below the center of his chest,” the complaint said.
Vineyard said his ex-girlfriend, Miller, stabbed him and then drove away in a Chevy Cruze. He was brought to a nearby hospital, and the patrolman, after being unable to find Miller, returned to Vineyard’s side to ask him more questions.
According to the complaint, Vineyard said the fight began because Miller had taken his house key and would not give it back. She had also allegedly become “infuriated” that he had texted other women — allegedly yelling so loud Vineyard was worried his landlord was going to kick him out.
When he asked her to leave repeatedly, Vineyard said she pulled out a “Rambo knife” and stabbed him near his sternum, “leaving a laceration of about two centimeters deep, and four centimeters in length.” The complaint noted that the suspect’s cellphone was left at the crime scene.
There was another cut beneath the larger one, Lester noted, “from where the knife was pulled out in [a] downward slicing motion.” A Rambo knife appears to be a style of hunting knife in which the blade is long and serrated, so named in an apparent reference to the popular “Rambo” movie series starring Sylvester Stallone.
The following day, the officer learned Miller was driving on College Avenue, a major road through the city of about 9,000 people, and he pulled her over. He detained her, and, when searching her vehicle, found a pair of flip-flops under a bag in the vehicle’s trunk “with what appeared to be fresh blood on the sides of them.” She also allegedly appeared to have blood on her dress.
The patrolman also found a knife matching the description Vineyard had given him. The complaint noted that another woman was in the vehicle with Miller when she was detained, and this other woman allegedly had drug paraphernalia on her and was arrested for it.
Miller gave conflicting accounts of what happened with Vineyard, according to the complaint, though both times acknowledged the two of them were drinking alcohol. First she said she left before any stabbing occurred, but then remembered that, because Vineyard allegedly “got in her face,” she used the knife for protection, though she didn’t remember pulling it out of the protective cover.
The complaint noted that the sheath recovered with the knife had a cut in it, suggesting Vineyard could have been stabbed with the knife while it was still in its cover.
Miller is jailed on a $10,000 cash surety bond.
