This is not what dreams are made of. A Kentucky man defended his wife this week after she was arrested last month for biting his face during a dispute involving none other than Hilary Duff.
Pike County locals Brandi and Ethan Lester got into an argument last month over whether Duff was featured in a commercial they had just viewed, Sergeant Kevin Belcher of the Pike County Sheriff’s Department confirms to Us Weekly.
“Basically it was a domestic violence complaint and I responded to it,” Belcher tells Us. “He told our dispatcher that he had been assaulted by his wife and they got into an argument.”
Ethan said at the time that as the argument got heated, he leaned over to give his wife a kiss on her forehead — and she reacted by, well, biting him. “He had a bite mark on his chin,” Belcher confirms to Us. “He has a beard and he pulled the beard back and he had a bruise or a bite mark on his chin, a scratch on his face and some scratches on his neck. He told me that she had also thrown some stuff at him…. That stuff was broken all over the living room.”
Brandi was subsequently arrested on charges of domestic violence. “Basically, I advised him: I said, ‘Hey, if you don’t know where she’s at, if she comes back here, you know I’m going to have to arrest [her], right?'” Sergeant Belcher tells Us. She came back to the home and was promptly arrested.
On Tuesday, January 5, Ethan told WYMT that his spouse wasn’t violent and the incident was a misunderstanding. “Me and my wife have, of course, been on edge as most families are around the holidays and stuff,” he said. “I’m unemployed and looking for work. I guess it just took one simple, one simple misunderstanding.”
Asked why she reacted by biting her husband, Brandi said Ethan wasn’t giving her the space she needed. “I asked her what her side of the story was and basically she just told me that she need some space and he wouldn’t give her any,” Belcher tells Us, “and she just needed to get away for a little while. That’s basically the gist of it.”
Though her husband didn’t want her to go to jail, authorities had to make an arrest. “He was like, ‘I don’t want her to go to jail, I don’t want her arrested,’ so I said, ‘Why did you call us?'” Belcher recalls. “I said, ‘You called us up here because you needed help and reported it.'”
The Lesters share three kids, and are not allowed to contact each other until their court date in March. She is facing fourth-degree domestic abuse and assault charges.
As for whether the girl in the commercial was Duff? “I don’t know if it was Hilary Duff in the commercial or not,” Sergeant Belcher tells Us. “Everybody keeps asking me that and I have no idea. I don’t even know what commercial it was. He doesn’t either, I don’t think.”
