Police: Woman stabbed another in belief she was wearing fur. Sanctimony as an excuse for violence

November 21, 2019

This image provided by the Cleveland Police Department shows Meredith Lowell. Lowell, a woman with a history of attacks on people wearing fur has been charged with attempted murder for stabbing a woman she believed was wearing the material at a church outside Cleveland, police said. (Cleveland Police Department via AP)

CLEVELAND (AP) — A woman with a history of attacks on people wearing fur has been charged with attempted murder for stabbing a woman she believed was wearing the material at a church outside Cleveland, police said.

Meredith Lowell, 35, is being held on a $1 million bond after the attack Wednesday afternoon at a Presbyterian church in Cleveland Heights.

The victim had brought children she was babysitting to the church for choir practice, and Lowell stabbed her twice in the arm and once in the abdomen with a kitchen knife, according to a Cleveland Heights police report.

A man wrestled Lowell to the floor and held her until officers arrived, the police report said.

The victim remained hospitalized Thursday, Police Chief Anne Mecklenburg said. Her condition was unclear. It’s also not clear whether the victim was wearing real fur.

A telephone number to seek comment from Lowell’s attorney could not be found.

Lowell was arrested a year ago on suspicion of attacking someone she believed was wearing fur at a Whole Foods store in University Heights.

A police report said Lowell punched and then tried to cut a woman wearing a jacket with fake fur on its hood with the serrated blade of a Swiss Army knife. The jacket was gashed, a police photo shows, but the woman was not cut.

Lowell was indicted in January on one count of felonious assault in Cuyahoga County. An online court docket shows she pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity last month. The case is pending.

And in March 2012, Lowell was indicted in federal court in Cleveland after authorities said she posted on Facebook that she wanted to hire a hit man to kill someone wearing fur.

Lowell wrote that she would be willing to pay between $830 and $850, according to an FBI affidavit.

An undercover FBI agent contacted Lowell, who asked that a person be killed with a gun or a knife at a Cleveland Heights library and that she planned to be there when the murder was carried out, authorities said.

Lowell told the agent she wanted to set up an animal rights militia and specified that a victim at the library should be at least 12 years old and at least 4 feet tall, the affidavit said. She was arrested in February 2012.

Those charges were dropped in January 2013 when it was determined she could not be “rehabilitated to competency,” court records show.