A nasty dispute that started Sunday night over a dog with no leash and ended with a broken flower pot and a dented screen door landed a New York man living in Oxford behind bars.
Wildwood Police officers were called to a home in the 10200 block of Dory Drive in Lakeside Landings, just outside The Villages, where an elderly woman said the alternation started when she asked her neighbor’s son to put a leash on his dog while he was walking it across several back yards in the neighborhood.
The woman said she was watering her plants a short time later when the dog jumped on her back. She said she became frightened and sprayed the animal with a hose to get it to leave her alone.
The woman said that’s when her neighbor, 59-year-old Richard C. Snyder, began to yell and scream at her. She said she was terrified so she went inside her screened porch and locked the door, but Snyder “got in her face” and continued to yell obscenities’ through the screen, a Wildwood Police report says.
The woman claimed that Snyder then kicked and shattered a flower pot that she had been hanging beside her rear door, and then kicked a panel in the bottom of her screen door that left a dent, the report says.
Officers then made contact with Snyder, who “immediately became very argumentative and refused to identify himself.” Officers said he continued to yell profanities at them and toward the victim’s house. And he made it “extremely difficult” to gather all the details regarding the incident, the report says, adding that he uttered multiple times, “You’re going to take me to jail for kicking a plant.”
The woman completed her statement and estimated the value of the pot and plant to be about $40. She signed an intent to prosecute form and Snyder was taken into custody. He was transported to the Sumter County Detention Center and charged with damaging property/criminal mischief. He was released early Monday morning on $500 bond.
