A man arrested in June in an alleged attack at a postal station in The Villages has been acquitted in the case.
Devan James LaRue, 24, was acquitted by a jury in the case last week in Sumter County Court. LaRue was represented by attorney Cary Rada, who in August advanced to a runoff with Brian Welke for Lake County judge.
Sumter County sheriff’s deputies had been called in June to the postal station on Lynnhaven Lane after LaRue began acting irrationally and threw a large bottle of water at a woman, striking her in the face, according to an arrest report.
LaRue, who lives in the Village of Ashland, was tracked down a short time later, still carrying a 101.4-ounce bottle of water, the arrest report indicated.
“The worst is over. Justice prevailed God was looking over this one all along! The truth will always set you free,” Dawn LaRue, LaRue’s mother, wrote in a post on Facebook.
LaRue remains behind bars at the Sumter County Detention Center on a probation violation.
LaRue had been released April 22 from the Florida Department of Corrections. He is currently on probation which is set to run through Oct. 21, 2021.
In 2008, LaRue was sentenced to nine and half years in prison in connection with the death of a woman in Pinellas County.
When he was only 15, LaRue snuck past his sleeping mother, stole her keys and sped off in her Mitsubishi Eclipse. As a Pinellas County sheriff’s deputy was trying to pull Larue’s vehicle over, he hit the gas and smashed into a Jeep Wrangler carrying Danielle Edwards, 34, and her co-worker Bradley Womack, who was 20 at the time.
Edwards died. Womack was seriously injured.
LaRue was charged with vehicular homicide and reckless driving with serious bodily injury.
