Woman Accused Of Murder By Stiletto—Are High Heels Deadly Weapons?

This week, high heels became exhibit A in a crime scene. A Georgia woman allegedly murdered her boyfriend with the pointy heel of her shoe. 46-year-old Thelma Carter is in custody after her live-in partner, Robert Higdon was found dead in their trailer with stab wounds believed to have been caused by her spiked high heel.
Here’s where it gets stranger: this is not the first stiletto attack of 2011. In fact there have been at least five by my count.

• In January, a stripper was charged with aggravated assault when she allegedy beat her co-worker in the face and head with the sharp heel of her shoe.
• In February, a 22 year old woman was arrested for brutally attacking two other women outside a bar in the UK with her stiletto. 
• In June, two men were attacked in separate incidents by a woman wielding a sharp-pointed heel in a bustling town center. Both were sent to the hospital with serious head and eye injuries.
• In July there two stiletto attacks: One involved a male British soccer player who got into a brawl over his girlfriend and borrowed a woman’s stiletto heel to slice his nemesis’ scalp.

The second random act of shoe violence happened last month at an McDonald’s drive-thru in Ohio. A 35-year-old man spotted a woman being beaten in her car in the line ahead of him. When he got out to help her, four women nearby mistook him for an attacker and clubbed him repeatedly. One woman took off her high heel and gouged his eye with it. He’s expected to have permanent damage to his vision as a result. 
With a tally of five assaults and one murder in the past year alone, the stiletto heel is looking less like a fashion statement and more like a deadly weapon. And in some states, it technically is.
“According to the California Penal Code, a deadly weapon is a firearm or any other instrument used with a force that is likely to produce great bodily injury,” writes L.A. criminal defense Attorney Stephen Rodriguez on his ‘Legal Dictionary’ website. “Consequently, cars, broken bottles, rocks, even the heel of a stiletto can qualify as a deadly weapon if it has been used to intentionally injure the victim.”
In other words, when you’re walking around in your most favorite and least comfortable shoes, you’re armed and dangerous.