Back on March 29, in Canton, Ohio, 50-year-old Phyllis Jefferson was charged with stabbing her 61-year-old boyfriend, Ronnie Buckner, with both a knife and a pen. November 16, she admitted to the stabbing and pleaded guilty to aggravated assault. Jefferson faces sentencing on Jan. 4.
Buckner alleged that Jefferson yelled at him because he ate all of their salsa. He claimed that Jefferson was so upset that she first stabbed him with a pen “in the left side of his pelvis.” Buckner then claims that while Jefferson went to grab a small kitchen knife, she knocked over his TV. As Buckner was saving the TV from hitting the ground, Jefferson stabbed him in the stomach with the kitchen knife.
Most people can agree that salsa is a great condiment. If you live anywhere outside of the Southwest, it is particularly difficult to find authentic and delicious salsa. Given that the two live in Ohio, I can understand that if they found some delicious salsa, they may be a bit selfish with it. If you believe Buckner’s side of the story, then that salsa must have been worth killing over.
I don’t doubt there may have been some argument between Buckner and Jefferson, but after hearing Jefferson’s side of the story, I’m not certain that argument was over salsa.
According to Jefferson’s attorney, Noah Munyer, Jefferson only stabbed Buckner because she just learned that he was a registered sex offender. In 1979 and then again in 1985, Buckner was convicted of various sex offenses. In 2003, a judge declared that Buckner “should be classified as a habitual sex offender and must register his address with the county sheriff every year for 20 years.”
Jefferson’s actions, of course, should not be condoned. No one should stab anyone for any reason. If she stabbed him only over salsa, we would likely call her crazy. In the depths of our subconscious, however, after hearing our significant other is a sex offender, some of us may have done the same. Before Jefferson gets in her next relationship, she needs to go online to check Ohio’s sex offender registry to avoid any this situation coming up again.
Featured Image by Joe Gratz via Flickr, available under a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication License
