For 10 hours, Oxford resident Tylor Lakes was a prisoner in her own home.
She didn’t know anyone else was there, according to Oxford Police Department reports. Her 4-year-old daughter was staying with a relative. It was midnight.
As she entered her bedroom, Lakes’ ex-boyfriend, Mark Reisert, attacked her from behind and started beating her. Throughout the abuse, he repeatedly threatened to rape her daughter and “cut all her skin off,” unless she stayed quiet, Lakes told officers.
Lakes told police she suffered through the attack from midnight to 10 a.m. on Feb. 15, according to the police report. The report also said that she managed to text a coworker and say “she had been beaten, was seriously injured and being held against her will,” which prompted the coworker to call the police.
She escaped from Reisert around 10:30 a.m., and was crossing the parking lot at her apartment just as the police arrived. Officers quickly entered Lakes’ apartment and arrested Reisert, a 52-year-old resident of Liberty, Indiana. He is now in the Butler County Jail, charged with felonious assault, abduction, aggravated burglary and violation of a protection order.
Lakes told police that she and Reisert had been dating last year, but that he had “stalked, harassed, and threatened her,” after they broke up in August 2018.
After an altercation in October, Lakes filed a protection order against Reisert and moved from Connersville, Indiana to Oxford to “get away from him,” according to Oxford Police reports.
On Nov. 17, 2018, Reisert was charged with aggravated menacing by stalking and violation of the protection order. According to the criminal complaint filed with Butler County Area Courts, he had come to Lakes’ apartment and banged on the window. He then went to Faded Traditions, where Lakes worked as a hairdresser, and circled the establishment for seven hours. After she got off her shift, she headed to Left Field Tavern—where Reisert also followed her, the report said.
Lakes stated on that complaint that Reisert had a history of physical abuse, and that she was “fearful that he may try to hurt her with this escalating behavior.”
Exactly three months later, Lakes’ fears came true. “I am an enforcer for the mob,” Reisert said, according to the incident report. “If you call the cops or scream I will kill your whole family.”
Reisert choked her again, until she “spit blood” and lost consciousness once more, Lakes told police.
She didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious, but she told the police it was definitely morning when she awoke the second time.
Officer Robert Lindner and Sergeant Josh Jenkins received a dispatch around 10:08 a.m. Feb. 15 to help Lakes at her residence. Oxford Lieutenant Lara Fening said that Reisert allowed Lakes to “make a call” at some point after she woke up, and the police report stated that she had called Rodney Kemp, a family friend, who drove to the apartment.
When the officers arrived at Lakes’ apartment, Kemp was already driving away with Lakes to go to the hospital. He stopped by the police cruiser, and Lakes told Officer Lindner and Sgt. Jenkins that Reisert had beaten her and that he was still in the apartment.
An ambulance was called to take Lakes to McCullough Hyde Hospital, Officer Lindner said in his report. He observed “bruising to both eyes, two bruises to the left shoulder area, cuts to the front of the neck, bruising to both lower legs, and bruising to the right knee.”
This is the second time that Sgt. Jenkins has been involved with Lakes and Reisert — he was also involved in the aggravated menacing by stalking and violation of protection order case from November. While cases like this do happen, he said they aren’t very common.
“We’re not known for high crime or aggravated natures of crime in Oxford,” Sgt. Jenkins said.
Reisert is still in custody in Butler County Jail on a $45,000 bail. On Feb. 21, he was summoned to Butler County Area I Court for a preliminary hearing. At this hearing, the case was bound over to a grand jury, which will decide whether to indict him on felony charges, or if the charges will be tried as misdemeanors, Fening said.