Jon's Fight With Billy-Bob

 


Jon had the good sense to handle an assailant in the way most likely to defend himself while costing the bad guy time, money and a criminal record: 

He pulled his truck into our driveway late on a Saturday night in the fall of 1996 with enough of a commotion for Barbara to get me out of bed.  He had been to a family 'fish fry' that afternoon, and had apparently been building up 'liquid' courage since then.

His objective was to intimidate me into accepting him into the 'road maintained agreement for the new property he had accessed by pushing an illegal driveway off of the neighborhood private lane.  (The owner of the lane was then in Virginia Beach pursuing her then future, now current, husband.)

I went out on our porch, barefoot, to see what the problem was.  He showed up, and seemed amenable, but had an empty container in his hand, so we offered the ingredients for a 'freshener.'

When I held the line that his new property would not become a part of the road maintenance agreement, he got belligerent and about then got back into his truck and tried to back out of our driveway.  He got tangled in my garden fence, and backed over my drainfield.

A short time later, his truck was again in my driveway.  This time, I backed it out to the main lane for him.

A third time, I walked out to meet him (with my 9-volt flashlight in hand).  At that point, he grabbed me with both hands behind my neck, brought my forehead to his, and was screaming: "I'm going to kill you; I'm going to kill you!" 

My instinct might have been to 'whop him upside the head' with my flashlight, but he was half my age, and I held off (besides, at some point he was into some sort of a judo, etc., stance, enough to knock his pager off of his belt).

We called the police, but he was back to his house by the time they arrived.

On the next day, Sunday, I took pictures of the damage and went into the adjacent county to have them developed at the Winn Dixie,& to see if my heart rate & blood pressure had subsided any.

Monday I went to our local magistrate and filed charges of assault & battery.  He was found guilty of both at the General District Court level; but a year later, on appeal to the Circuit Court (& a new lawyer), they were down-graded to trespassing.  He was not to have further contact with me.

jl