Local man accused of knife attack

PALMER — A 46-year-old man was jailed last week after Alaska State Troopers say he attacked his girlfriend with a knife in the Buffalo Mine Road area.

According to documents filed in the case against Jeffrey Beilen, the first call about something being amiss at the cabin home off of Mosewallow Avenue actually came from Beilen himself at 2:01 a.m., Aug. 31.

“Beilen reported that his girlfriend … left his residence intoxicated in a vehicle,” according to the court documents Trooper Andrew Ballesteros prepared.

Ballesteros wrote that he tried to find Beilen at the cabin and called him a couple of times. Before leaving, he was able to discern that Beilen’s pickup wasn’t at the house, but his girlfriend’s pickup was.

Ballesteros went back out on patrol, but he didn’t stay there long before, at 3:50 a.m., dispatchers reported that the girlfriend had showed up in the emergency room at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage. She was telling Anchorage police there that she’d been assaulted.

According to that officer, the girlfriend’s injuries consisted of three deep lacerations — one on her right thumb and two on her left index finger. She needed seven stitches.

The Anchorage officer “advised that her injuries were consistent with defensive wounds and the information she provided,” Ballesteros wrote.

He said he later talked to the woman who said that on Aug. 30, she and Beilen had gone to the Alaska State Fair with some friends. They drank and went to the Sluicebox. Beilen went home by himself. The two texted back and forth while she was still at the fair. Eventually, she went back to the Moosewallow cabin with some friends.

She parked at the end of the driveway and started walking up to the house.

“Jeffery ran at her from a nearby hill on the side of the driveway, confronting her near the cabin,” Ballesteros wrote. “Jeffrey had a large hunting knife (approximately 10-inch blade with a wood grain handle) in his hand and attempted to thrust it towards (the girlfriend’s) throat.”

He yelled and swore at her, Ballesteros wrote, and said, “you’re gonna die.”

The woman blocked the blade with her hands. A friend interrupted the attack and she was able to get away and into her friend’s vehicle, which they took to Providence.

Ballesteros wrote that after talking to the woman he tracked down Beilen on that Moosewallow property hiding in a camper trailer.

“Jeffrey stated that he originally fled the residence and was hiding in the trailer to elude law enforcement because he was scared,” Ballesteros wrote.

Beilen’s interview, Ballesteros wrote, was “inconsistent and lacked specific detail about the assault.”

He was arrested, charged with domestic violence assault and jailed at the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility, initially without bail set, as is customary in domestic violence cases.

By 1 p.m., Aug. 31 he’d made his first court appearance. Bail was set at $10,000 and he was ordered to find a third party to watch him before he can be released. As of Wednesday afternoon he was still incarcerated.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.