Gainesville woman arrested for throwing picture frame at boyfriend

BY JARRED SPANOS

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Maliyah Renee Clark, 18, was arrested Monday after throwing a picture frame into the back of a man at The Crossing at Santa Fe, hours after loud repetitive pounding sounds and screams were heard from an apartment.

Alachua County Sheriff’s deputies, responding around 4 a.m. to a 911 call for a crime in progress, found the victim wounded in the upper back. He was treated by paramedics at the scene, then taken to a hospital shortly after; Clark has been charged with aggravated domestic battery and is being held on $5,000 bail.

According to residents at the apartment complex, the incident began the night before. 

“At 10:30, I heard them arguing and she was outside crying again,” said a neighbor about the victim and the alleged assailant, who live together.

Other residents reported hearing the accused on other occasions, yelling and crying, late in the evenings.

The neighbor said the screams Monday were louder than in the past. She said that around 4 a.m., she suddenly woke up, alarmed. She asked her boyfriend if he heard it. “She was sobbing, like literally screaming,” she said.

She looked out a window that has a view of the walkway connecting two apartment buildings and recalled telling her boyfriend, “There’s a guy standing protecting her, and the stabbing victim is running and yelling in her face.”

The neighbor said she experienced similar things when she was younger and lived in Connecticut.

She experienced a meth house blowing up and a lot of shootings and drugs before the age of eight, yet she described the fight as “one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen.”

A coworker of the accused woman, who also lives at the apartment complex, ran to the apartment and saw the crime scene. He told other residents that “the man was beating her.”

The co-worker reportedly said there was “blood all over the place” in the apartment where the stabbing took place. “She was laying on the floor screaming. The man was already stabbed and everything and arguing and yelling at her.”

One of the neighbor’s roommates thought it was gunshots because there was a very loud pounding noise. The neighbor said she thought that it could have been the man beating on the building: “I thought he was punching it,” she said.

Another resident who has seen an arrest at this complex described his time at The Crossing as “pretty wild.”

There was a fight at the basketball court that needed to be broken up by the police, he said. There have been two arrests for assault and battery within the past year.

The resident was not home during the fight but said, “I’ve heard that couple argue, and maybe physical stuff happens. The cops have been out here a lot recently.”

Articles about arrests are based on reports from law enforcement agencies. The charges listed are taken from the arrest report and/or court records and are only accusations. All suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.