Sep 13, 2016 5 min read

The trial of a state trooper charged by North Strabane police in connection with smacking his wife and slamming her on the ground in their neighbors’ yard during a fight in October began Tuesday with the alleged victim taking the stand to paint herself as a “drama queen,” call herself “the aggressor” and claim she previously embellished details of the incident while she was “hysterical.”

“I came at him,” Emily Campbell said during questioning by attorney Christopher Blackwell – who represents her husband, 34-year-old Christopher Joseph Campbell – about the blow she sustained on the right side of her face during the Oct. 25 incident. “He defensively put his hands up.”

Emily Campbell, 32, of 229 Fieldbrook Drive, was the first witness in her husband’s jury trial before Washington County Judge Gary Gilman on a charge of simple assault.

Police said they were dispatched about 10:43 p.m. that night when a neighbor called 911. When police arrived, Emily Campbell allegedly said her husband smacked her in the face, dragged her away from the neighbors’ front door and threw her to the ground in the front yard.

Christopher Campbell, a former marine, joined the state police in 2008. He was most recently assigned to Troop B’s Washington barracks.

State police spokesman Cpl. Adam Reed said Christopher Campbell is suspended without pay. The agency is waiting for the trial to conclude before it begins an internal investigation “and then (will) go from there,” he said.

The prosecution and defense have their respective narratives into which they hope jurors will fit Emily Campbell’s testimony.

Assistant District Attorney Kristin Clingerman said in her opening argument society has a responsibility to protect victims of domestic violence even if “they cannot, will not protect themselves.”

Blackwell said during a break Clingerman was “arguing facts that are not in evidence,” during her opening statement, including improper references to “‘battered woman syndrome’ – and in this case there’s no evidence of that.”

According to Emily Campbell’s testimony, she became angry at her husband that evening because he’d been out drinking since about lunchtime instead of helping her with their two children, 6 and 3.

The couple exchanged a flurry of visceral, profanity-laced text messages, with Emily Campbell threatening to kill her husband, who, for his part, at one point called her “a (expletive) degenerate psychopath,” according to testimony in open court.

When Christopher Campbell got home, the fight became physical, and he allegedly hit her in the face with his palm. He also pulled the door of a linen closet off its tracks and hit the wall hard enough to make a hole as he left the house again.

Emily Campbell said she drank two nine-ouce glasses of wine once her husband left to calm down. She called her in-laws to help defuse the situation.

Her husband later returned to their home, and at that point, she ran out of her house toward a neighbors’ townhouse with her husband pursuing her.

Next-door neighboor Douglas Digiovanni said although the windows and door at the front of his house were closed, he could hear Emily Campbell scream, “No, no, no, not again.”

She opened the screen door at the front of the house but the main door was locked, and Digiovanni said he watched as Christopher Campbell “wrapped her up (with his arms) and kind of drug her down to the ground,” where he “pinned her down with his hands on her shoulders.”

Emily Campbell weighs about 120 pounds; her husband, about 230 pounds, she said.

Digiovanni said he was too afraid of what the larger man could do to him to go outside. Concerned for his infant daughter’s safety, he locked the child in a room upstairs. His wife called 911.

Emily Campbell on Tuesday compared herself to a child who was throwing a tantrum and said her embarrassed husband tried to bring her back to the house.

“I’m still trying to get him off of me … and I believe from the struggle we both fell down to the ground,” she said.

Emily Campbell also accused Clingerman of “using me as your pawn” and “putting words in my mouth” to get her to help in the case. She also described the Digiovannis as “weird,” and the husband – who is a physical therapist – in particular as “not a very friendly man.”

Clingerman asked about previous incidents of abuse she allegedly described to police when they came to her house on the night in question.

Emily Campbell retorted, “If I said it, it was because I was being a drama queen and I wanted attention” and pointed out she’d been drinking.

Pressed by Clingerman about testimony she gave at a preliminary hearing in December that appears to contradict the account she gave at the trial, the alleged victim claimed Clingerman pressured her into testifying while she didn’t have legal counsel to advise her of her rights.

On Tuesday, she appeared in court with former county District Attorney Steve Toprani, who now represents her.

The trial is set to resume today.