Woman's bail set at $15,000 after allegedly hurting her child, attacking her parents and deputies

As Park County Sheriff’s deputies carried the yelling woman to a patrol vehicle on Saturday, she demanded to know her charges.

Melissa Briggs (a.k.a. Melissa Flores) was formally read all eight of them on Tuesday: a felony count of aggravated assault and battery, a felony count of child abuse, two felony counts of assaulting a peace officer, two misdemeanor counts of interference with a peace officer and two misdemeanor counts of domestic battery.

Melissa Briggs (a.k.a. Melissa Flores)

Briggs, 35, is alleged to have choked and kicked her 62-year-old mother, slammed her 10-year-old child’s wrist in a door, punched and kicked her 62-year-old father — who was on crutches as he recovered from a recent surgery — and then fought with deputies as they tried to arrest her Saturday evening.

Circuit Court Judge Bruce Waters set Briggs’ bond at $15,000 cash at her Tuesday appearance at the Park County Courthouse. She posted that amount and was released on Thursday.

The Sheriff's Office described Briggs as being from Cody, but she told the court on Tuesday that she lives in Lander. Briggs said she’d been working as a part-time para-educator at an elementary school in Riverton.

An affidavit from Park County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Chad McKinney filed in support of the charges suggests that Saturday’s incident began when Briggs’ 10-year-old daughter asked if she could call her other grandmother, who also lives in Cody.

Briggs — who’d reportedly been sneaking off to drink throughout the day — didn’t want her child to call the woman, Briggs’ mother later told McKinney.

When the girl tried leaving the room to use Briggs’ mother’s phone, Briggs slammed the door and it caught the child in the wrist, McKinney wrote of Briggs’ mother’s account. Briggs is then alleged to have got her mother on the floor and begun choking her.

Briggs’ father had been staying in bed as he recovered from surgery, but he intervened to get Briggs off of her mother; Briggs then began hitting him, the charging documents allege.

During the altercation, Briggs is alleged to have also kicked her mother in the stomach, pulled her hair and pushed on her throat with enough force that she struggled to breathe, according to the accounts from her parents to the Sheriff’s Office.

Briggs pushed, kicked and punched her father and threw a bowl, a cup and an apple during the altercation, McKinney wrote of the parents’ account.

The Sheriff’s Office was summoned to Briggs’ parents’ home on Sage Creek Road just east of Cody around 6 p.m. McKinney and the other responding deputy, Justin Kroeker, found Briggs’ father on top of her, trying to restrain her.

Briggs resisted being handcuffed, then refused to walk to the patrol vehicle, McKinney wrote. He and Kroeker carried Briggs to the vehicle, but she fought against going inside.

She twice kicked the door open, hitting Kroeker, and scratched McKinney’s right hand (causing it to bleed) and pinched the skin on his left forearm (leaving a bruise), McKinney wrote.

A preliminary hearing in the case is tentatively set for Friday.

(Editor's note: This version corrects Briggs' first name in the photo caption.)

~By CJ Baker

by CJ Baker, crime, Park County Sheriff's Office