The King County Prosecutor has charged a 33-year-old woman with first-degree and second-degree assault for allegedly driving an ax into her uncle’s head after threatening her aunt with it at her trailer in Auburn’s Tall Cedars Mobile Home Park on Jan. 9.

Arraignment for Daniell Marie Meckle is at 9 a.m., Jan. 25 in Courtroom GA of the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent. She is in King County Jail on $250,000 bail.

Doctors at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle treated Meckle’s uncle and expect him to survive.

Police say the assault was unprovoked. Witnesses recalled that in the days before the incident, however, Meckle alleged that her uncle had assaulted her.

According to the Certification for Determination of Probable Cause prepared by Auburn Police, officers responded at 9:41 p.m. to a call from the mobile home park, where they found a man in a trailer, bleeding heavily from his head. Two other people at the home identified the attacker as Daniell Meckle, who they said had left the trailer.

A witness told officers that the victim was asleep on a couch in the living room when Meckle came out of her room and began arguing with her aunt, at which point the victim woke and sat up. According to what the aunt told police, she and her husband were visiting the aunt’s brother at the time, but Meckle didn’t want them in her home. She claimed that her niece lunged at her, swinging an ax, and she, the aunt, stepped back to avoid being hit.

Meckle then allegedly turned to her uncle and swung the ax downward, striking him once on the top of his head. The aunt said she heard a crack. According to a witness, Meckle had to use both hands to remove the ax.

According to witnesses, Meckle then went into her room, and emerged a short time later with a bag and left the trailer.

According to court records, when police arrived they found the victim lying on a couch, “bleeding profusely” from a wound in his head, and was in so much pain he could not communicate with officers.”

Officers soon found and arrested Meckle.

Officers later found the ax buried in 2 feet of soil in a neighbor’s back yard, clean and smelling of laundry detergent.

Here is what Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Jill Yamamoto told the judge at the bail hearing.

“The defendant is alleged to have lunged at one of the victims with a hatchet-like ax and hit another victim once in the head with the blade of the ax. The witness says the axe had to be pulled out of the victim’s skull. At the time of the filing, that victim was intubated at the hospital, and the extent of his injuries is unknown.

“The defendant is also alleged to have fled the scene and attempted to hide evidence, as detectives uncovered an ax buried by a tree close to the trailer housing complex where the incident is alleged to have occurred. The defendant is also alleged to have contacted the person who lives at the trailer where she was arrested by a jail call and directed him to hide something so it was never found,” Yamamoto said.

Meckle has no prior criminal convictions in Washington state.