My Boyfriend’s Brother Slashed My Tire

My boyfriend’s brother(31M) is a terrible alcoholic, a bully, and terrorizes his family. Before I(35F) fixed the lock he’d broken on their front door, he’d just show up at all hours of the day and night and just cause havoc. In one instance I was getting up to leave, because I refuse to put up with his bullshit, and he got ahead of me and shoved me with the door. When I pushed back, he then opened it and pushed me, telling me I wouldn’t dare touch him in his mom’s house. He’s right— his mother is older and I didn’t want to cause a scene in her already small apartment and upset her and the neighbors. There’s not much she could do, she’s only about 5’ and is afraid of him.

This time, he showed up at about 2AM, crashed into the room my boyfriend and I stay in when we come visit, and started looking for “something he (apparently) lost” and then made himself comfortable. He knows I make our encounters as low contact as humanly possible when he shows up and makes a point of it to try to get a rise out of me by making not-so-covertly hostile conversation. At 2AM. His brother tries to placate him and asks him to leave. When it became obvious he wasn’t going to go easily, I started packing up my stuff and announced that I was going to head out. As I was bent over the bed grabbing my bag, he got up and started pushing past me to get to the door. I got freaked out, stood up, and pushed him away from me, and told him not to touch me. He then full body shoved me, repeated the thing about “not touching him in his mom’s house”, and then quickly left. My boyfriend witnessed all of this.

Early this morning, my boyfriend and I had packed to leave, as I told him I didn’t feel safe and wanted to go home. When we got to the car, my back tire had four obvious punctures in the sidewall, and was completely flat. I travel A LOT for work, and check them about twice a week, and they are all pretty new tires, so there’s no way it was damage incurred while I was driving. When we went inside, his mother mentioned that as he left, she had looked up from sleeping on the couch and seen him grab a knife as he was leaving. She called him to let him know we were aware of the damage and told him not to come around her house anymore. He denied everything, and then told her that when he had left (he parked in front of the apartments), my tire was already flat (I was parked around the side of the apartments, definitely not in view).

My boyfriend paid to replace my tire, but it’s not right. I want to press charges and get a protective order against his brother, but I’m not sure what to do or if it’s worth pursuing. If it helps, I live in Texas, took several pictures of the scene, and my boyfriend is willing to back up my statement.