Woman gets prison term for cutting stepfather

By Linda Cicoira

A former Greenbackville woman was sentenced to three years in prison Thursday in Accomack Circuit Court for unlawfully wounding her stepfather when she cut him with a kitchen knife in January of 2022.

All but the five weeks she spent in the local jail just after she was arrested was suspended for 45-year-old Karen Garrison, who was living with her mother and stepfather, Harry Wilson, on Brigantine Boulevard, when the incident occurred.

Garrison, who now resides in South Carolina, said her stepfather, Harry Wilson, got angry after she walked between him and the TV. She said he punched her in the face. She grabbed the knife to defend herself. It was also disclosed that he hit her several times with his metal cane, bending it in the process.

Wilson told authorities that Garrison struck him in the head with an axe. The knife was collected at the scene that day. Wilson reportedly brought the axe to the district court for the preliminary hearing more than a month later.

The axe was never sent away to a lab because Garrison said she would plead guilty. In exchange for her plea, the initial charge of malicious wounding was reduced.

“I am sorry about what happened,” Garrison told Judge W. Revell Lewis III. The defendant was the victim of a rape when she was a teenager and suffered other traumas involving abusive men that caused her to have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Defense lawyer Isabel Kaldenbach said Garrison is committed to being in therapy for the rest of her life. She said Wilson never explained how his cane was damaged.

Lewis put Garrison on good behavior for five years. He did not order supervised probation. She was ordered to pursue mental health services.