Burnsville Man Charged with Strangling Woman with Belt, Slamming Her to Ground

A Burnsville man has been charged with allegedly using his belt as a noose to strangle a woman last week and body-slamming her to the ground during an argument.

Gerald Paul Houle, 40, faces two felony charges: third-degree assault, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, and domestic assault by strangulation, which has a maximum penalty of three years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

According to the criminal complaint, police were called a Burnsville apartment complex on May 22 on a report of an assault.

They found the victim on the floor in the third-floor hallway with a cut on the right side of her forehead, red marks on her neck, dried blood on her lips and bruises on her body. She told police she couldn’t feel her legs and thought something was wrong with her back; she was taken to a hospital.

The woman, who was suffering a “large amount of pain” while she gave a statement, told officers that Houle came home from work about 3:30 p.m. May 21. She said he had been drinking and began to make derogatory comments to her and yell at her, pushing his face into hers.

The woman became frightened and scratched Houle’s face and bit him before packing some belongings, gathering up her children and leaving the apartment for a few hours, she told police.

When she returned home, the woman left her children in the apartment building’s community room and went back up to the apartment. She found the locks on the apartment door hanging, as if they were being replaced.

Houle was in the apartment when she arrived, and he became angry and began yelling at the victim again, according to the complaint. He destroyed some of her children’s toys and some furniture before wrapping his arms around the victim from behind, pinning her arms to her sides and then slamming her to the ground, the complaint charges.

Houle told the victim to get on the bed “or else I’m going to choke the living [expletive] out of you,” according to the complaint. He took off his belt, fashioned it into a noose and put it around the victim’s head, the complaint says.

“The way he was acting and talking, I thought he was going to choke me to death,” the victim told police.

Houle then sat on the victim’s chest, put his hands around her neck and squeezed, then put his hands over her mouth and nose, cutting off her air, the complaint says.

When the victim began to struggle or attempt to pull away from Houle, he kept her pinned to the bed, at times pulling her hair to keep her there, according to the complaint.

When the victim was able to get away from Houle, she retrieved her children and went to a neighbor’s apartment to call 911.

A physician treating the victim told police that the woman had suffered a fractured vertebrae.

Police found Houle asleep inside the apartment. He admitted to officers that he had drunk more than a pint of vodka and that he and the victim had a verbal argument. He said they had been “wrestling around” and that he had been protecting himself, according to the complaint.

Houle is free on a $75,000 bond. An omnibus hearing in his case is scheduled June 19 in Dakota County District Court in Hastings.