By Christine McConville and Colneth Smiley Jr.
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A Medford mom accused of stabbing her husband to death told cops she was defending herself from his assault when she stabbed him, and that she suspected he was cheating on her, police said.
Shawtina Lavonne Burston, 38, pleaded not guilty to murder yesterday in Somerville District Court. District Court Judge Elizabeth Cremens ordered her held without bail.
Medford police said they were called to the Burston home on Exchange Street at 10:45 p.m. Sunday.
There they found Troy Burston, 34, lying in a blood-stained snowbank just outside the front door of the couple’s home.
Burston was “shirtless and his pants were soaked with blood,” police said. “He had one clearly visible wound to the upper left chest area.”
Police transported him to Lawrence Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Medford police Detective William Haffner said in his report that officers went to the Burstons’ home after calls came in about reports of a stabbing. Shawtina Burston let police in and told them, “It was self-defense. He was choking and hitting me.”
When officers asked Shawtina Burston what she used to stab her husband, the report said, “She replied that she blacked out and she did not know what she used, but that whatever the weapon was, it was in the kitchen.”
Police say they found a knife in the garbage.
Burston told police that when an “all-day” fight with her husband became physical, her husband’s shirt was torn, “and she noticed what looked like a ‘hickey’ on his chest.”
“She also stated that she had suspected many times in the past that he had been unfaithful because he had sometimes come home with scratches, torn clothing and underwear, or with his underwear inside out,” Haffner wrote in his report.
The suspect told police she swung the knife at her husband “to scare him,” and that she threw the knife in the garbage “after she ‘poked’ him with it,” Haffner’s report states.
Toni Troop, spokeswoman for Jane Doe Inc., an advocacy group for domestic violence victims, said this is believed to be the state’s second domestic violence-related homicide of 2011.
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