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Police: Quincy woman threatened to kill herself in car with children

TPD: Quincy woman threatened to kill herself in car with children
Posted at 12:20 PM, Dec 18, 2018
and last updated 2018-12-18 07:25:14-05

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - A Quincy woman has been charged with child abuse after she attempted drive her car over a 7-foot drop off in Tallahassee with two children trapped inside her car.

Fantasia M. Knox, 33, was jailed Sunday.

Tallahassee Police officers were called to a construction site at 2700 Welaunee Blvd on Sunday, according to arrest documents. 

When officers spoke with a victim, he said that he arrived at the construction site around 8 a.m. that morning. Not long after his arrival, Knox pulled up to where he was in the parking lot. Eventually, the two got into an altercation and Knox began punching and slapping the victim as he tried to hold her arms to keep her from hitting him, the document said.

The victim told officers he backed away from her and, as he returned to work, Knox shredded his shirts, ripping both off of him. The victim continued walking away from Knox and didn't have any further contact with her.

When Knox came back to the car, documents say several witnesses reported that she yelled that she was going to kill herself. She then jumped in the car and "floored" the gas, driving the car over a curb and toward a 7-foot drop off. 

However, documents say the car got stuck in clay just few feet before the car could go over edge. Witnesses told police that Knox then backed up the car, but the car got completely stuck.

While this was happening, witnesses say that the children inside the car were screaming and trying to get out of the moving car. When the car came to a stop for the final time, one child jumped out while the other was pulled out of the car by a witness.

Arrest documents say that when the car got stuck the second time, Knox got out of the car and ran away.

Upon inspection, investigators wrote the car had no type of child safety seats. "Since the children were unrestrained, had they gone over the drop, they could have been severely injured," the investigator wrote.

Officers responded to the area in force, and eventually found Knox in a taxi cab. The taxi driver told police that Knox had fled to a nearby church and told them a story. "They gave [Knox] shoes, a blanket and bought her something to eat from McDonald's, and called the cab for her," documents say. 

When they spoke with her, Knox told investigators that she was "very depressed," asked the investigator to "have mercy," and asked that she be taken to "Apalachee," the court document said. She also told them that she was homeless because of Hurricane Michael.

Based on the evidence, Knox was arrested. As of Tuesday, she remains in the Leon County Detention Center on two counts of cruelty toward a child and one count of of domestic battery. No bond amount has been listed.