60-Year-Old Hopkins Woman Knifes Man During Cocaine Argument

A 60-year-old woman attacked a man with a knife following an argument over cocaine, according to charging documents released Friday.

Police arrived at the Hiawatha Court apartments at 9:38 p.m. Monday to find an unnamed man in the parking lot covered in blood and bleeding from his face, Detective Renee Meuwissen wrote in the criminal complaint. Officers noted a large cut on his left cheek and additional cuts on his arms.

The man said he’d been hanging out with his friend, Linda Hart Gardener, and was drinking beer. At some point, she got angry and started arguing with him. The man said she then came back with a knife and started cutting him.

(Gardener is not the same person as the similarly named Linda Gardner, special services director at Hopkins Public Schools.)

The man said, “It all happened so fast,” but that he was able to run out of the apartment and call police.

While officers were talking with witnesses, they could hear Gardener yelling incoherently inside her apartment, according to the charging documents. They went to the apartment, saw the door was ajar and continued to hear her yelling.

After officers apprehended her, she told them she either put the knife in the sink or threw it away. They found it in the garbage covered in blood.

Gardener told police that she and the victim had gotten in an argument over cocaine, according to court documents. She said she then grabbed a knife, brought it to the bedroom and told him, “I’m not going to do this anymore and I can’t do that, I can’t handle it like you can.”

She then refused to say anything else about the incident.

Gardener has been charged with:

• Second-degree assault, a felony with a sentence between one year and one day in prison and seven years in prison and a $4,200 to $14,000 fine and
• Third-degree assault, a felony with a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $3,000 to $10,000 fine.

She was released from Hennepin County jail Thursday on $20,000 bond.

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