A South Florida cop arrested for beating his wife after she refused to have sex with him told police it was her own father who beat her.
Plantation police officer Matthew Shechter also claimed his wife was drunk and belligerent and was yelling at him because they are going through a divorce.
He claimed he was only trying to keep her father from beating her. He is an award-winning police officer, after all, whose word outweighs the word of the mere mortals who don’t wear badges.
But Coral Springs police determined he was lying and arrested him Thursday on charges of domestic battery and domestic battery by strangulation.
According to WPLG:
Shechter’s wife told officers they had hired a babysitter Wednesday night so they could go to a casino. When they returned home and were in bed, she said, Schechter punched her in the face about six times when she refused to have sex with him. It was just the beginning of her nightmare.
“She acted like she was passed out, hoping Matt would stop striking her, at which time he ceased,” Officer Tyler Reik wrote in his report.
She told officers that although “she was in tremendous pain,” she waited until she was sure he was sleeping, grabbed her phone and tried to crawl toward the door of the bedroom to exit. She said he woke up and shouted, “You are not calling the cops!”
Shechter’s wife said she found the strength to open the door and yell for her teenage son to call 911 before Shechter closed the door, locked it, grabbed her by the neck and punched her again several times. When he let her go, she said, she yelled for her son to call his father or 911 and ran into her son’s room.
Shechter was arrested on March 22 and released the following day on a $20,000 bond. The 32-year-old cop did not say anything to reporters who were waiting to speak to him outside the jail, having been reduced to a mere mortal.
Shechter, who was hired in 2010, was placed on unpaid leave, according to WPLG.
