Police: Garner man dies after wife beat him with baseball bat

Harriett McNair Boykin, 67, was arrested Monday on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury. She remains in the Wake County jail without bond.

Garner police were called to 1721 Misty Meadow Lane at about 2 p.m. Sunday and found 58-year-old Joey Keith Boykin seriously injured. Investigators said Harriett Boykin has struck her husband multiple times in the head with a metal baseball bat.

"Sounds like they were in a fight, and she hit him with a bat," a neighbor told a 911 dispatcher. "[She said] he threw something at her, and she was protecting herself."

"Can you tell me where the bat is?" the dispatcher asked.

"It's probably in the house. She doesn't have it. She's hysterical," the neighbor responded.

Joey Boykin was taken to WakeMed, where he died Monday night.

The Boykins had a "toxic" relationship, his relatives said, alleging that Harriett Boykin stabbed Joey Boykin in the abdomen before they were married, and the violence between them never stopped.

"I always had felt something was going to happen, but not to this extreme," said Melvetine Boykin-Matoko, Joey Boykin's sister. "It’s hand in hand. They both – he’s not an angel – they both had their own faults, as we all do."

Garner Police Department records show officers responded to five domestic violence calls at the Misty Meadow Lane home in the past year, with the latest on Feb. 7, when Harriett Boykin locked her husband out of the house and told officers she was afraid of him because he was drunk and violent.

In a 911 call on Feb. 1, Harriett Boykin said her husband threatened to shoot her because she found evidence he was cheating on her.

"It was a rocky relationship," said Jerome Boykin, Joey Boykin's brother. "It had good moments, and they had more bad moments, I think, than good."

The family said they don't believe Harriett Boykin's claim that she was defending herself in the Sunday incident.

"There’s not a person that can sit here and say that they didn’t know that she was the aggressor," said Jenuine Boykin, Joey Boykin's niece. "She continuously hit him and hit him and hit him. That is hate."

"I just want to know why," Boykin-Matoko said. "Why, Harriett, when so many times I’ve told you both to walk away? Why?"

The case remains under investigation, and the charge against Harriett Boykin could be upgraded to murder following Joey Boykin's death.