A Windham woman is being held at Cumberland

County Jail after dragging a man from her pickup truck through a

South Portland parking lot Tuesday evening.

Chaka Coleman, 27, was arrested and charged

with elevated aggravated assault, a Class A felony, and driving to

endanger, while the victim, a 29-year-old Westbrook man, was

transported to Maine Medical Center, having hit his head on the

pavement when he fell from the vehicle.

Sgt. Tom Simonds, shift commander at the South

Portland Police Department, said Wednesday that it is unclear just

how far the man was dragged, although “the entire incident happened

within the parking lot.”

Coleman also was charged with simple assault

and obstructing the report of a crime, a result, police said, of

having stopped to slap a cell phone from the hand of a witness, who

attempted to call 911.

Simonds said Colman and her victim “definitely

knew each other” and had quarreled immediately prior to the

incident, which occurred at about 6 p.m., in the parking lot behind

Newick’s Lobster House, on Gorham Road. However, because that lot

serves several nearby restaurants and businesses, including Olive

Garden and Bugaboo Creek Steak House, it was unknown which place,

if any, either had come from.

Simonds said it appeared the Westbrook man

reached into Coleman’s vehicle. It is unclear, he added, if the

victim did so before or after Coleman began to pull away, or

whether he held on or somehow got hung up on the window frame.

However, “he sat up and walked away” from

where he fell, said Simonds. A South Portland police officer

stopped Coleman as she was pulling out of the parking lot.

“She was highly confrontational,” said

Simonds.

Coleman, who is being held on $75,000 cash

bail, was scheduled to be arraigned in Cumberland County Superior

Court Wednesday afternoon.

Maine Medical Center would not release

information on the victim’s condition without a name, which South

Portland P.D. would not divulge while the investigation remains

open. Simonds said officers have yet to interview him for his

version of events.

Chaka
Coleman