GARY — For the second time this year, Patrolman Demonte Yanders is in jail, charged with multiple felonies, accused of assaulting his live-in girlfriend.
Yanders, who celebrates his 30th birthday Thursday, was on top of the woman and beating her when Patrolmen Nicholas Ferrell and Phillip Komisarcik entered the couple’s Woodlake Village apartment about 5:15 a.m. Sunday.
He is charged with two counts criminal confinement, strangulation and misdemeanor battery. He is at the Lake County Jail in Crown Point.
The victim, Tiffany Swagerty, 31, was “curled up on the bedroom floor crying” when one of her three children opened the apartment door for police. She had bruises on her cheeks and neck and a bite on her back, the probable cause affidavit states.
Early Sunday, at the conclusion of his birthday celebration at a Brunswick night club, Yanders argued with a man at the front door. Family members tried to get him to leave, and finally “pushed” him into the passenger’s seat of his car, with Swagerty behind the wheel. She told Detective Pete Baum that Yanders continued to argue with her and demanded she return to the club, but she refused. When they arrived home, he punched her face and she triggered a panic alarm, which summoned police to the apartment.