By Kassondra Cloos
The Gazette
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A federal corrections officer who assaulted a neighbor and her friend over the weekend did so after a verbal argument in which the male victim allegedly used a racial slur against him.
Frederick Lamar Wells, 46, was arrested Saturday after Colorado Springs police say he hit a man and a woman with a metal, baton- or club-like object. The victims told police Wells attacked them after he and his wife overheard them talking negatively about the male victim’s girlfriend, and thought they were insulting Wells’ wife, according to the arrest affidavit for Wells.
While Wells was threatening to break the man’s neck, the male assault victim said “I didn’t say that, (slur),” the female victim told police. She said he “usually uses that type of speech or slang as part of normal conversation,” and did not believe he was “using the term in a racist tone,” police wrote in Wells’ arrest report.
Wells was identified by a Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesman as a corrections officer for the high-security U.S. penitentiary in Florence.
The two victims had been talking loudly about the male victim’s girlfriend, they told police, including saying that she had been cheating on him. Wells overheard the conversation and thought the pair was talking about his wife, they said.
An argument ensued after the male victim cursed at his girlfriend. The report said Wells and his wife claimed that the male victim had been about to assault Wells’ wife and Wells was defending her.
Wells allegedly hit the woman with a metal object and repeatedly beat the man with it, causing him to fall into several trash cans.
The man was taken to the hospital for skull and facial fractures and an intracranial hemorrhage, according to Wells’ arrest affidavit. The woman had a cut on her face.
Wells posted $25,000 bond Monday, according to the El Paso County jail.