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Melissa Grant-Terhune, 43, is scheduled for an April 9 hearing in Fort Lee Municipal Court for “attempting to cause bodily injury to [the victim], specifically by scratching the right side of his face,” a Fort Lee police report says.
Her attorney said she was acting in self-defense and intends to file a complaint against the alleged victim.
Borough police arrested Grant-Terhune the night of March 3 after the 43-year-old man showed them scratches, bruises and other injuries.
Although he declined to press charges, police arrested Grant-Terhune after finding her in her 2017 Acura, parked at Main Street and Bigler Street, hours later, according to the police report. She was released after being processed, it says.
Grant-Terhune -- whose 45-year-old brother, Christopher, died a month earlier, "was defending herself after being grabbed by the hair and having parts of her hair ripped from her scalp," defense attorney Frank Carbonetti told Daily Voice on Wednesday.
"She has filed a cross-complaint in the matter and she will be vindicated," Carbonetti said.
This wasn't her first brush with the law.
Lodi police said they found Grant-Terhune drunk behind the wheel of her car parked in the middle of the street outside a local home the night of Jan. 13, 2016.
She’d had a dispute with a woman who lived there, they said.
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