St. Paul Man Charged in Burnsville Domestic Assault

A St. Paul man has been charged with second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon after authorities say he tied up his Burnsville girlfriend with a vacuum cleaner cord, knocked out several of her teeth and tried to strangle her.

Russell Eugene Avent, 27, is also charged with making terroristic threats, false imprisonment, endangering a child, domestic assault by strangulation and interfering with an emergency call. He is being held in the Dakota County Jail in Hastings.

According to the complaint against Avent, Burnsville police were called to the victim’s Burnsville apartment just after midnight on Monday. She told a police dispatcher that Avent had assaulted her and was trying to break into her apartment.

When police arrived, they found the victim “extremely upset and crying,” covered with scratches and cuts on her face and head, bleeding from the mouth and lips, with several of her teeth knocked out. Her 1-year-old child was also in the apartment.

The victim told police that she has been romantically involved with Avent for a month and a half and had a seven-month relationship with him five years ago. Although Avent has been living with his father in St. Paul, the victim said, he had been staying at her apartment two or three days a week.

The victim said she and Avent began arguing because Avent believed that she had had sex with another man the night before. According to the complaint, Avent grabbed her by the hair, threw her on the floor and repeatedly threatened to kill her.

The victim said Avent put his hands around her throat and squeezed, then forced her to stand up and remove her clothes. According to the complaint, Avent began to hit and slap her back and buttocks and continued to accuse her of cheating on him. He grabbed an electric cord attached to a vacuum cleaner and started to bind her ankles together, threatening to “[expletive] kill you” and “[expletive] stomp your face,” the complaint says.

During the assault, the victim received a text message from a neighbor, asking if she could borrow her vacuum cleaner. The complaint says Avent removed the cord from the victim’s ankle and left the apartment to deliver the vacuum to the neighbor.

When he returned, the complaint says, Avent forced the victim to admit that she had sex with another man, then began punching her in the face with his fist. The victim told police that she thinks she passed out, waking up when she felt “crunching in her mouth” and discovering that her teeth had been knocked out.

“After the punches, Avent forced [the] victim to a different area of the living room, turned off the lights [and] forced her upstairs, where he began crying,” the complaint says. “Avent then attempted to clean up some of the blood from her face and several surfaces in the bathroom. Avent said, ‘I am going to jail.’”

Avent returned downstairs and yelled at the victim to come back down, according to the complaint. When she did, he grabbed her, dragged her down the remaining stairs, threw her over a rocking chair and again put his hands around her throat, the complaint says.

The victim told police that Avent kept his hands around her throat for about a minute, during which time she couldn’t breathe or talk. She said he told her, “This is where the police are going to find you. I am going back to prison; I might as well finish the job.”

Avent hid the victim’s cordless phone and disconnected phone cords in the kitchen during the assault so she couldn’t call for help, the victim said. She said that at one point, Avent held a kitchen knife 3 inches from her body while he threatened to kill her.

When Avent left the apartment to ask a neighbor to buy cigarettes for him, the victim locked the apartment door and called police, she said. She said he took her cell phone with him.

The complaint says police found two teeth on the living-room floor and a “large quantity” of bloody rags and towels on the floor of the bathroom and kitchen, along with a kitchen knife on the kitchen table.

When police stopped Avent’s car in Eagan a short time later, they observed a “dry red substance” on his shirt, pants and shoes, and found blood on both his hands. He also had the victim’s cell phone, according to the complaint.

Avent, who has a lengthy criminal history unrelated to the current charges, is being held on $200,000 bond. An omnibus hearing in his case is scheduled for May 23.