Police were called Saturday night to a home on Cherryville Road, over a report of a man and woman fighting. When they spoke to the couple, the woman told police she had been in an argument with her ex-husband, 60-year-old Charles Edward Jeffrey, when he pulled out a box cutter and attempted to cut out her tongue. She said she fled the home to get away from him.

Jeffrey admitted to police that he had been fighting with his ex-wife and that he had been drinking and smoking marijuana, but said he didn’t hurt her. However, the woman showed police where she had been cut on the bottom of her tongue.

Jeffrey was arrested and charged with first-degree assault, as well as felon in possession of a firearm, after police reportedly found a shotgun next to him when they interviewed him. He is being held in the Big Sandy Regional Detention Center in Paintsville.