Woman Arrested for Threatening Children

On April 2, 2025, a 59-year-old woman was arrested on two counts of aggravated assault and false imprisonment after she allegedly held two children at gunpoint for fishing in her backyard.

Brevard County Sheriff’s Office deputies responded to the woman’s home after she called 911 to report two teenage boys had been fishing in her backyard. She told the dispatch officer she had “petrified” the children and they were lying on the ground after she had stopped them.

She allegedly walked into her backyard with a pellet gun to scare the 15-year-old and 13-year-old, police said. The boys told deputies the woman threatened them after she caught them fishing in a pond behind her home.

“The victims stated that they feared for their life and believed that violence was about to take place,” police wrote in court filings. The woman “ordered the victims onto the ground and stated they could not leave.”

Before making the arrest, police investigators interviewed witnesses who corroborated the children’s version of the events.

Witnesses in Criminal Cases

For the state, a witness in a criminal case often seems like the nail that shuts the coffin lead. But for a Tampa criminal defense lawyer, a witness could be a nail remover that opens the coffin lid, allowing the defendant to go free.

Police officers are usually the only witnesses in many cases, such as drug possession and DUI. These individuals are basically professional witnesses.

But in other cases, such as domestic battery, civilian witnesses must testify. Frequently, these witnesses lack credibility. Their testimony is accurate, at least for the most part. But it’s not legally reliable, and in this area, reliability is all that matters.

Trauma affects perception. In a famous Stanford University study, an actor aggressively interrogated subjects for more than an hour each. The next day, the subjects couldn’t pick the interrogator out of a lineup.

Overall recall is an issue as well. Usually, a Tampa criminal defense lawyer can delay a criminal case for at least a year. This delay is frustrating yet necessary. After so much time passes, many lay witnesses have no independent recollection of the event. They only remember what someone else told them or what they read in a police report.

Furthermore, most lay witnesses have never testified in court before. This setting is very intimidating, and a few probing questions from a Tampa criminal defense lawyer is often sufficient to break these witnesses. That being said, a good lawyer knows how to undermine the credibility of witnesses without attacking them and antagonizing the jury.

Credibility is very fragile in criminal court. It’s tough to develop and easy to lose, mostly because the burden of proof (beyond any reasonable doubt) is so high in these cases.

Affirmative Defenses in Criminal Cases

Defense of property, a subset of self-defense, is an affirmative defense in criminal cases. The actual definition is complex. But the gist of it is that defendants may use a proportional amount of force to counter an imminent threat.

Unfortunately, neither self-defense element seems present in the above case, at least based on the immediately available facts. Brandishing a weapon, even an air pistol, is probably not a proportionate response to a child with a fishing pole. Furthermore, a 59-year-old woman usually has little reason to be afraid of two children.

We stress that things look bad in terms of self-defense at the moment. Appearances are very often deceiving. Further investigation could reverse this appearance. Many teenagers are pretty big kids who can take care of themselves and aren’t easily frightened. The defendant’s self-defense case may be even stronger if she’d confronted teenagers at the fishin’ hole before and they didn’t pack up and leave voluntarily.

Additionally, the defense need not be strong enough to “beat” the charges. The defense must only create a reasonable doubt.

Connect With a Diligent Hillsborough County Attorney

A criminal charge is not the same thing as a criminal conviction. For a confidential consultation with an experienced criminal defense lawyer in Tampa, contact the OA Law Firm. We routinely handle matters throughout the Sunshine State.

Source:

the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/florida-woman-fishing-teenagers-gun-b2726385.html