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Man arrested for holding girlfriend at knife-point charged in similar crime decade earlier
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BATON ROUGE - A man who was arrested in August for holding his girlfriend at knife-point and saying he would kill her following cheating allegations was charged in a nearly identical case more than a decade earlier.
In July, an arrest warrant was filed for 36-year-old Niquel Harris. It says that Harris accused his live-in girlfriend of cheating after a male friend sent him text messages. He then tried to strangle her and grab her to hold her down. The document says that when she got away, Harris grabbed a knife and said, "I will use this if you try to leave." Documents said that there was a child in the home during the disturbance, and Harris struck the woman's dog in the back with a metal pole.
Harris was arrested August 20 for domestic abuse battery with strangulation, false imprisonment while armed with a dangerous weapon and cruelty to animals.
Parish records show that Harris was booked in a similar case in 2014. An affidavit says that Harris, then 25, got text messages from a male friend before confronting his then-girlfriend. Documents say Harris grabbed a kitchen knife, took the woman's clothes off, put the knife to her throat and threatened to kill her if she didn't answer his questions. Harris allegedly hit the victim with a belt and a metal curtain rod before forcing her to have sex with him. Law enforcement noted that the victim's children were in the home during the ordeal.
Harris was arrested for false imprisonment with a weapon, aggravated rape, domestic abuse battery with strangulation and child endangerment, and aggravated battery.
In 2015, he was indicted for second-degree kidnapping and aggravated rape. He pleaded to false imprisonment with a dangerous weapon and aggravated battery, landing him a 10-year sentence but keeping him off the sex offender registry.
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