Crime, Politics

Congressional Staffer Arrested For Beating Gay Lover With A Shovel According To Police

The twist in this story is startling and unexplained.

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As the old adage goes, “idle hands are the playground of brutal shovel beatings.”

With the House stuck in limbo while the “Republican Revolution” lives out the prophetic words of Jacques Mallet du Pan, there’s not much to do for a lowly Hill staffer, and even less for a Hill staffer in the minority. And just like NFL off-season this is the time when political operatives work their way into the police blotter.

This case, reported yesterday afternoon by Roll Call, is both disturbing and serious, and yet also bafflingly weird. Honestly, this is one of the most underwritten accounts ever that grabs you with “brutal shovel beating” and then hold you with a twist that you never see coming, which they then never bother to explore:

Tim Foster, a native of Henderson, Ky., brutally beat his male lover with a small black and red shovel, according to a police report obtained by CQ Roll Call, leaving the victim hospitalized with abrasions and bruises on his upper back, neck and torso.

The dispute started around 12:30 a.m. inside a Northwest Baltimore home, when Foster, 32, got into a verbal argument with the 39-year-old black male identified as his boyfriend.

Well that certainly sounds more contentious than a Judiciary Subcommittee romp! Same-sex domestic abuse is woefully underreported, in part because of a misguided sense of machismo that assumes a victimized man should have been able to stand up for himself in a fight regardless of the circumstances. So we should be glad that, if true, this dispute was properly reported.

But the bizarre details of the case just can’t escape the curiosity of Congressional observers.

And it’s what the blotter claims happens next for the online communication manager for Congressman Sander Levin that leaves you scratching your head:

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Foster put his boyfriend in a choke hold and stated, “I want to kill you. Die dirty faggy,” the man later told police. Foster released him, then allegedly grabbed a stainless kitchen knife. As the boyfriend fled toward the stairs, Foster chased him and warned, “When you reach the fifth step, I am going to stab you.”

Foster lunged at his boyfriend with the knife. But Foster’s wife “got in the way” and the knife then fell to the floor, the report states.

The wife “got in the way.” Yeah, I’ll bet she did.

It strikes me that the wife is a pretty significant player in this triangular dispute, no? So, obviously, she’s never mentioned before or after this. Would it have killed someone to mention the wife at any point before she magically disarms a guy? Our Dealbreaker colleague, Thornton McEnery said the tale recalls the works of Ernest Hemingway: a startling detail that throws the narrative off-track… and then never comes up at any point later. How does “got in the way” turn into “the knife then fell to the floor”? Was she hurt? Is she a ninja who disarmed him drawing on her years of combat training? Why is she even mentioned if there’s no intention of explaining how the knife “fell to the floor”?

The write-up explains the precise appearance of the shovel — “a small black and red shovel” — as though anybody (except the police themselves, obviously) cares about this more than the other person in the room the whole time.

According to the report, Foster “faces second degree assault and dangerous weapons charges” and is on unpaid leave. Meanwhile, we remain as curious as ever about the actions of the Deus Ex Machina that allegedly saved the boyfriend from a stabbing and then vanished from the narrative…

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Levin Staffer Arrested for Allegedly Beating Lover With Shovel [Roll Call]

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