ARCADIA — DeSoto County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a call on Christmas Eve around 5:30 p.m. in the 1100 block of S.W. Harlem Circle, where they found a man and a woman who had been arguing. Deputies questioned the victim, a 47-year-old woman, who was “hysterical and visibly upset.” She was found to have marks on her neck and a cut on her cheek which was bleeding.

She told deputies she and her boyfriend, Willie Mack James Jr., 58 — whom she had been dating six or seven months — had been drinking and arguing, when James pinned her on the couch. He held the knife to her throat and reportedly said, “I’m going to kill you.” She described him holding a silver-bladed knife with some rust on it. She also said he had hit her head on the bed of a pickup.