Ex-Fort Worth officer gets probation in domestic dispute

FORT WORTH A former Fort Worth officer is on probation for 24 months for threatening his wife by yelling that she should be set on fire and have her eyes gouged out, as their children stood nearby at the Arlington home, according to Tarrant County court records.

Lawrence Blanchard, 52, of Arlington was sentenced to two years of probation with deferred adjudication in a plea agreement on the charge of terroristic threat of a family member on Friday. Blanchard also was fined $295.

An assault charge in the May 20, 2014, incident was dismissed, records show.

Blanchard, a 25-year veteran of the Fort Worth Police Department, was placed on restricted duty after his arrest in May 2014, police said. He retired on July 1, 2014, police said Wednesday.

Neither prosecutors nor Kyle Whitaker of Fort Worth, Blanchard’s attorney, could not be reached Wednesday for comment.

Arrest warrants obtained by the Star-Telegram last year gave this account of the incident:

Blanchard began drinking May 19, 2014, and argued with his wife about the six children they had between them. Four of the children, all under age 5, were at the house. The dispute continued into the morning of May 20, when Blanchard began to verbally abuse his wife.

He called her derogatory names and told the 4-year-old that she was a prostitute and wasn’t really the child’s mother.

His wife says he spit in her face twice, grabbed and twisted her right wrist and waved a handgun, saying, “I got something for you, I got something for you.”

She recorded the incident on her smartphone in two excerpts, one 30 minutes long and the other about nine.

In the longer recording, Blanchard calls his wife derogatory names and tells her that when she dies, he won’t have a funeral and will throw her body into the woods so the maggots can have her.

In the other recording, Blanchard orders the 4-year-old to tell his mother, using profanity, that he will cut her throat. The child does so. Blanchard can also be heard threatening to kill his wife and gouge her eyes out.

At some point, Blanchard’s 25-year-old niece arrived at the home and heard the argument. The niece described Blanchard as “very angry” and said he may have “snapped.”

The niece told Arlington detectives that she got Blanchard to leave with her to pick up another one of his children at school and then took him to her mother’s home.

In the May 28, 2014, police interview, Blanchard acknowledged that he and his wife had been arguing over the children, but he denied assaulting her. He said he had the handgun that morning so she wouldn’t hide or destroy it.

Blanchard also said he never threatened to kill his wife and confirmed that he spit in her face but said it was an accident. He told detectives that he might have called his wife names.

He said his wife told his older son to kill himself.

During the May 28, 2014, interview, Blanchard agreed to take a polygraph, but he later declined.

This report contains information from Star-Telegram archives.

This story was originally published May 27, 2015 at 11:16 AM with the headline "Ex-Fort Worth officer gets probation in domestic dispute."