Police: Drunk woman punches cop, eats boyfriend's deceased mom's diamond earrings

TROY, Mich. (WJBK) - It was around 10:30 p.m. Saturday night when Troy Police were called to a house in the 600 block of Jamaica Street. A man needed help getting a guest who had overstayed her welcome to leave.

"Asked her to leave, she refused. She had been drinking. He was trying to get her a way home safely," said Troy Police Lt. Josh Jones.

That's how the call came in -- a boyfriend upset over the actions of a drunk girlfriend. 

"She had put diamond earrings in her ears and a ring on her finger that belonged to our caller's mother who had passed away," Jones said.

 Police say they had no reason to suspect what 33-year-old Sylvia Hope Verellen would do next. 

"One of her very first actions was to punch one of the officers with a closed fist," Jones said.

Now it was assault, and police say it escalated from there. 

"Through the course of their contact they had punches thrown at him. She had spit at them, she had kicked at them ... tried to bite them," Jones said.

Police say her actions were getting more daring and dangerous. 

"As they were moving across the front of the house to the police car, she tried to grab an officer's firearms from his waist," Jones said.

As for the jewelry that the caller said she had taken from his house:

"She thought the best course of action at some point was to swallow the earrings," Jones said.

It was promptly regurgitated at the hospital and returned, while Verellen has been arraigned on two counts of assaulting a police officer.