Catlin Wolfard

Authorities say a 37-year-old man assaulted his girlfriend at their Powell home last week, chipping one of her teeth and bruising her body.

Catlin S. Wolfard faces a felony count of aggravated assault and battery and a misdemeanor count of domestic battery in connection with the altercation, which reportedly took place on the night of Aug. 3 and early morning of Aug. 4.

During a Friday hearing in Park County Circuit Court, a magistrate followed prosecutors’ recommendation and set Wolfard’s bail at $10,000 cash. However, he experienced a medical emergency on Saturday and was flown to a Billings hospital. Wolfard remained hospitalized on Monday.

During Friday’s hearing, Wolfard had expressed confusion at multiple points, including about when and where the altercation is alleged to have occurred. He indicated that he didn’t believe he was in Powell at the time.

In requesting the $10,000 bond, Deputy Park County Prosecuting Attorney Ericka Smith cited “the violence and the concern for the protection of the victim.”

While Wolfard has no prior criminal history, statements from his girlfriend indicate that there’s “an ongoing issue of domestic violence” as the couple has moved across multiple states, Smith said.

Multiple arguments, bruises

The affidavit filed in support of the charges was composed by Powell Police Lt. Dustin DelBiaggio and is largely based on the account the woman provided to officers on the evening of Aug. 4.

The woman reportedly said she and Wolfard began arguing on the night of Aug. 3, initially about how many steps the woman had walked at work

That dispute ended, the affidavit says, but after they drank some whiskey, Wolfard reportedly became “extremely angry.” A separate argument about some other topic broke out around 1 a.m., the woman recalled, and Wolfard threw cans of White Claw hard seltzer at her. The full cans didn’t hit the woman and were later consumed, the affidavit says.

Wolfard closed a window so their neighbors wouldn’t hear the arguing, and when the woman reopened it, she said Wolfard punched her two or three times in the back of the head.

The woman said “she told Catlin [Wolfard] ‘Don’t beat me’ and Catlin responded with ‘Stop saying I beat you, now you’re going to see how it feels to be beat,’” DelBiaggio wrote.

As the woman tried to get away, Wolfard reportedly pushed her around the residence and into furniture for several minutes. She said she was eventually able to go to bed, but around 3 a.m., Wolfard told her to go to the living room. 

When she tried to retrieve her phone from the bedroom, she said Wolfard punched her twice in the face and chipped her front tooth.

The woman contacted Powell police on the morning of Aug. 4, requesting that they document her bruises, but not create an official report, as “she was afraid for her life,” Officer Anthony Firkins wrote in another affidavit. Firkins said he noticed “significant bruising” to the woman’s upper torso and arms, including hematomas “at multiple stages of healing.” To Firkins, that showed “a history of abuse.”

Police later obtained a search warrant for the couple’s Powell home and spoke with the woman again on the afternoon of Aug. 4.

“[The woman] said abuse is normal, but he had never punched her [before], which is the reason she called,” DelBiaggio wrote.

Police arrested Wolfard and he claimed that the woman “bruises easily, and falls frequently, causing the injuries,” DelBiaggio wrote. However, the woman said that wasn’t true and indicated he’d bruised her in an altercation about a week earlier.

When the woman was checked out at Powell Valley Hospital on Aug. 4, “she had substantial bruising to her chest and body that the forensic nurse told me she’d not ever seen in her days of doing this work,” prosecutor Smith said in court.

Defendant confused

At Friday’s hearing, Wolfard indicated that he has a disability and made several unclear references to his email account.

“... I’ll respond to email,” he told presiding Circuit Court Magistrate Brianne Phillips of the allegations, “because I don’t believe I was even in town then.”

And when Phillips asked if he wanted a court-appointed attorney, Wolfard initially responded that he “would like to go over my emails first, and then I can get back to you.”

Amid the defendant’s apparent confusion, prosecutor Smith offered that Powell police “did not have any indications of any competency issues, cognitive impairment, nothing of that nature … in case those thoughts were going through the court’s mind about his ability to proceed.”

Shortly after that, Wolfard asked the magistrate for an itemized list “of where I need to go in what town.”

“I can look at my email, but some might drop through the cracks,” he said, adding that he’d experienced about $10,000 in “fraud” the previous day.

Phillips then asked Wolfard if he’d had any trouble understanding her routine questions. The defendant responded that he’d had “no difficulty.”

Wolfard was hospitalized the following day, putting the case on hold.