By Jessica Tuggle
jtuggle@hometownnewsol.com
VERO BEACH -- A 75-year-old Vero Beach woman is still in jail after stabbing her husband last week.
Joan Ann Mead of 766 14th Ave., Vero Beach, was arrested and charged on Dec. 31 with attempted felony murder and aggravated battery on a person 65 or older.
She remains in custody at the Indian River County Jail in lieu of $550,000 bail.
According to the arrest report, Ms. Mead admitted to going into the kitchen and retrieving a large chopping knife and stabbing her husband, Arthur Mead, 78, while he was brushing his teeth in the bathroom.
In an interview with detectives, Ms. Mead said she believed her husband was supporting a child-out-of-wedlock and he wouldn't tell her the identity of the child, so she stabbed him.
The victim was taken by ambulance to Lawnwood Regional Medical Center and was treated for a single stab wound to the upper back, two and one-half inches wide and two inches deep. If the knife had traveled deeper in the same direction, it would have struck the victim's heart, the arrest affidavit said.
Sgt. Thomas Raulen, public information officer for the Indian River County Sheriff's Office, said the victim was released from the hospital last week and is doing well.
For more information from the Indian River County Sheriff's Office, visit www.ircsheriff.org.