A Butler woman was found guilty Wednesday of a lesser charge of slashing a man's throat after a night of drinking, wrestling and egg fights.

Assistant District Attorney Mark Lope argued that 35-year-old Tara Kyles-Edge slashed a man's throat using a broken wine glass in 2017 after an argument over government welfare and living in a basement.

The jury trial was held in the courtroom of Common Pleas Judge William Shaffer.

Kyles-Edge was charged with felony aggravated assault, but after jurors deliberated for about two hours they found her guilty of a misdemeanor simple assault.

Kyles-Edge's lawyer, J.W. Hernandez-Cuebas, argued that his client accidentally injured the victim when she threw a wine glass at a wall behind the man, causing a ricocheted glass shard to slit the man's throat.

Through six witnesses, the two sides laid out their version of events.

At the end of the trial, attorneys for both sides agreed to add a simple assault charge as an option for the jurors. Kyles-Edge will be sentenced for the lesser charge March 19.

“They were throwing eggs at each other and were wrestling,” Assistant District Attorney Mark Lope said to the jurors in his opening statement. “These people were hanging out together, and they had a tragic ending.”

First responders transported the victim, Mark Holmes, 34, to Butler Memorial Hospital, but his wounds were severe enough for him to be transported to UPMC Presbyterian by helicopter.

In Hernandez-Cuebas' opening statement, he conceded that “there was a glass that cut his neck” but that his client didn't intentionally hurt the man.

Through the trial, Hernandez-Cuebas developed an argument that Kyles-Edge previously was in an abusive relationship and that Holmes, who has a record of simple assaults and PFA orders, made Kyles-Edge feel threatened.

The first witness called by prosecutors was Capt. Ben Spangler, who responded to the victim's 911 call.

“They were having an egg battle,” Spangler said he observed as he approached the defendant's house on Wagner Avenue.

In a written statement to Spangler, Kyles-Edge stated a group of four people, including herself and Holmes, spent the night egging each other, arm wrestling and regular wrestling and drinking wine and beer. 

She noted that the group regularly gets together for these activities. But on Aug. 4, 2017, things escalated.

Earlier that day Kyles-Edge kicked Holmes out of her house after an argument but soon after repeatedly texted him to coax him back.

When Holmes wouldn't return to her home, she went to the victim's home a few blocks away to bring him back to her house.

Kyles-Edge later took the stand, saying that the night started out lighthearted.

“We had a nice time. We were egging and wrestling,” Kyles-Edge said.

But Holmes testified that he wasn't in the mood.

“She got the eggs to have an egg fight, but nobody wanted to have an egg fight,” Holmes said. “So (Kyles-Edge) started smacking me with eggs real hard like. She got upset that nobody wanted to have an egg fight.”

Kyles-Edge disputed his story, testifying that everybody was in the mood for an egg fight. She said Holmes was “belligerent.”

“I was just scared,” she said.

Both sides claimed that they were sober during the night.

Holmes said they began to argue about his basement residence.

The argument turned to Kyles-Edge's toddler son.

“And not even in the blink of an eye, I get hit with a wine glass,” Holmes said. “I got up and noticed my neck was wet. Blood was everywhere.”

Holmes testified he suffered lasting physical damage from the cut and also suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Kyles-Edge said she merely threw the wine glass at a wall near Holmes' head and that she never meant to hurt Holmes.

Todd Luckasevic, a forensic pathologist who reviewed the case, said Holmes' injury was a superficial incision that was stretched about 3 inches down the side of Holmes' neck. He also noted that there were injuries indicating something blunt hit him toward the back of his head.

Luckasevic said this injury to the neck area created a “substantial risk.”

Luckasevic said on arrival at UPMC Presbyterian, Holmes was rushed to the emergency room so quickly that there wasn't time to get his signature consenting to the operation. He said Holmes lost about a liter of blood, or a quarter of his total blood supply.

Hernandez-Cuebas said the verdict was legitimate. He said that he and Lope had come to a plea agreement where Kyles-Edge would plead guilty to simple assault in exchange for dropping the aggravated assault charge. But, he said, Holmes didn't want Kyles-Edge to get a reduced charge so the parties took the case to trial.

In Lope's closing arguments, he said that “Mark Holmes, not citizen of the year but he didn't do anything to deserve this. Hold her accountable for what she did.”

And after the trial he said “we respect the jury's decision.”