A 40-year-old Lady Lake woman, who was arrested after she admitted to stealing a phone from a woman last year in the waiting room at The Villages Regional Hospital, is poised to avoid prosecution in the case.
Carol Marie Caruthers was taken into custody on a felony charge of grand theft in connection with the Dec. 1 incident.
Caruthers told a Sumter County sheriff’s deputy that she had been in the waiting room when she walked to a vending machine to get her daughter a snack. She spotted the phone in a gold case on a chair, picked it up and decided to keep it because her daughter had recently broken her phone, according to an arrest report from the sheriff’s office. She said she took the phone into the bathroom and left it on the sink, because she got a guilty conscience.
The owner of the phone had reported it missing to hospital security. A security officer had stopped Caruthers at the time, but Caruthers denied she had the phone.
Last month in Sumter County Court, Caruthers entered into a pre-trial intervention contract. If she completes the terms of the deal, she will not be prosecuted.
