Serial domestic batterer gets 5 years

DECATUR — Serial domestic batterer Adrian D.L. Barbee has been sent to prison for five years.

The 32-year-old Decatur defendant was actually sentenced to a total of 15 years — five years each on three domestic battery cases involving injuries to three different victims.

But the sentences were ordered to run concurrently by Macon County Circuit Court Presiding Judge Thomas Griffith as part of a plea deal negotiated by defense attorney Lindsay Evans.

Assistant Macon County State’s Attorney Christina Mullison said Barbee has a solid track record of violence against the women who have the misfortune to end up either as his girlfriend or the mother of his kids.

Mullison also cited three previous domestic battery convictions that include Barbee being sentenced to 18 months in prison in March of 2017 after pleading guilty.

And he also admitted two other domestic battery offenses in a sentencing hearing on Jan. 17 of 2023 and was handed a two-year prison sentence. However, by the time he was sentenced, Barbee wound up only having less than four months left to serve with allowances for time previously spent in custody and other credits.

The three latest domestic battery charges for which Barbee was sentenced at a hearing Wednesday date from June and September of this year. On June 13 sworn affidavits from Decatur police said he got into an argument with a woman he has been in an “on and off dating relationship” with for the past eight years, and she suffered neck injuries after being choked.

On June 19 police said he was in a dating relationship with a 21-year-old woman who was strangled during an argument before being punched repeatedly about the face and head.

The third charge dates from Sept. 5 when a 24-year-old woman, the mother of Barbee’s child, was also repeatedly punched in the face.

“(She) sent a picture of her face to my Decatur Police Department issued cell phone which depicted what appeared to be blood coming from her nose,” said Officer Timothy Wittmer. “Her nose and lips appeared swollen, consistent with having been struck in the face.”

Barbee had been arrested Sept. 5 after a police chase that ended with him being found hiding under a porch in the 400 block of South Haworth Avenue. He denied hitting the woman and claimed “she must have used fake blood” when she sent that picture to the cops, the affidavit says.

Barbee, whom the affidavit noted was stained with blood but had no bleeding wounds of his own, complained of having broken his left hand while jumping a fence to flee from police.

Officers noted that the hand was badly swollen, but Wittmer suspected another explanation for the injury: “Barbee had significant swelling on his left hand which appears consistent, based upon my training and experience, with having punched a hard object,” the officer said.

In passing sentence, Griffith agreed to dismiss two further charges of aggravated domestic battery and several unrelated offenses. These included two counts of aggravated fleeing from police, two counts of driving on a revoked license and one count of drug possession.