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Police: Man Tried To Kill Girlfriend Twice

CHICAGO (STMW) -- An alleged knifeman free on $1 million bail for the alleged attempted murder of his girlfriend last year was arrested again Friday after he tried to kill her a second time, prosecutors say.

Police dramatically grabbed Lance Wyatt, 33, as he attempted to jump from the ledge of an 11th-floor window on Lake Shore Drive after he stabbed his girlfriend Peggy Keane in the neck and fractured her skull in a brutal attack, according to police.

The attack at Keane's apartment on the 1400 block of North Lake Shore in the early hours of Friday came nearly a year after Wyatt first allegedly tried to kill his 36-year-old lover.

Police responding to a domestic battery call Friday heard sounds of beating from outside Keane's apartment and heard Wyatt shout, "Shut the ---- up, stop crying," according to court records.

Wyatt refused to let the officers in, barricaded the door with furniture and continued to batter Keane, it's alleged.

When a building manager eventually used a key to let the officers into the apartment, Keane was bleeding and vomiting blood while a girlfriend who was in the room with her during the attack tended to her wounds, the records state.

A drunk Wyatt hid his hand from the officers, telling them, "I've got something for you — go ahead and shoot me or I'm going to kill you." Wyatt then climbed onto a window ledge but was grabbed by the officers as he tried to jump, according to a police report.

Keane remained at Northwestern Hospital Sunday, where she underwent surgery to her vocal chords. Wyatt also was hospitalized. He was unresponsive, police told Judge Jackie Portman Sunday.

Portman ordered Wyatt held without bail on his new charges of attempted murder and domestic battery.

Keane's friends say her friend likely saved her life by staunching the flow of blood from her neck wound. Keane rekindled her relationship with Wyatt after he tried to strangle her last year and Wyatt's father posted the $100,000 bond to release him from the Cook County Jail, they added.

--Chicago Sun-Times, via the Sun-Times Media Wire

(Source: Sun-Times Media Wire © Chicago Sun-Times 2011. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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