A recent report in USA Today ranked The Villages as one of the nation’s communities in which crime is rising the fastest.
The Villages came in at No. 9 in the USA Today report, citing a 35.7 percent rise in crime over the past five years in Florida’s Friendliest Hometown.
“The Villages is one of 50 cities to rank among the fastest growing cities in each state. It also has the fastest growing violent crime rate in Florida,” the report said.
There is a case to be made it is simply a numbers game – more people, more crime. It’s something that USA Today admitted in its report.
“Still, The Villages is relatively safe. The were 234 violent crimes for every 100,000 metro area residents in 2017, below the state rate of 408 per 100,000 and U.S. rate of 383 per 100,000,” the USA Today report said.
A look back at some arrests in the past year could help explain the rising crime rate:
• Village of Antrim Dells resident Douglas Robert Bowen was arrested Aug. 5 after allegedly attacking a Pennsylvania man who had traveled in a golf cart with his 12-year-old and 15-year-old daughters to Publix at Grand Traverse Plaza. Bowen was enraged because the golf cart had entered the parking lot in the wrong direction, according to an arrest report. Videotape from the scene showed Bowen punching the Pennsylvania man several times, tossing him onto a nearby vehicle and putting him in a headlock. The 63-year-old Villager is facing a charge of battery and remains free on bond.
• Village of Bonnybrok resident Brian Gregory Anderson, 54, had been arrested last April after attacking his Culpepper Way neighbors with bug spray. While he was free on $27,000 bond, he was re-arrested in June after claiming he put a bounty on the heads of five police officers. He also threatened family members. The Buffalo, N.Y. native has been sentenced to 30 months with the Florida Department of Corrections after pleading no contest to the multiple charges he was facing.
• A longtime restaurant worker in The Villages was arrested after a standoff in July in the Village of LaBelle North. Brian Davis allegedly robbed at gunpoint the manager at Belle Glade Country Club and then barricaded himself in the home of his girlfriend’s parents.
He told negotiators he wasn’t going back to jail, suddenly backed an SUV through the home’s garage door and led law enforcement on a wild ride. The 34-year-old continues to be held without bond at the Sumter County Detention Center.
• Twice last year, a Village of Haciendas of Mission Hills man was hauled away in handcuffs after alleged attacks on his wife. At the time of the first arrest, Robert Schaeffer and his wife had been arguing for eight weeks before he “grabbed her by the throat and told her they were both going to die tonight,” according to an arrest report. He put his hands around her neck and tried to force her into a car. She was able to break free after she kneed him in the groin. A deputy who examined the Ohio native’s wife found bruises on her body, including some that were a week old, the arrest report indicated. That case was dismissed. The 66-year-old was arrested again in November. He has since been allowed to move back home.
• A Village of Fenney resident was arrested this past November after displaying a gun during a dispute over a dog. Martin Lewis Levine, 58, had been arrested on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon – a third-degree felony. His gun had been loaded with six live rounds. However, the native New Yorker’s lawyer successfully negotiated the charge down to a misdemeanor. In February, Levine entered a plea of no contest in the case. He has been sentenced to probation for one year and ordered to perform 30 hours of community service.
• A Villages couple’s 29-year-old son armed with large kitchen knives was arrested in September after he allegedly cornered his mother in a bedroom closet in the Village of Pine Hills. An argument with his parents became heated and he threatened to “kill everyone” in the house. The father went to a neighbor’s house to get help and call 911, leaving his wife alone with their son. She was soon cornered in a closet. Her husband returned with a neighbor, heard screaming and ran to the bedroom. They were able to talk the son into surrendering the knives, but not before he had threatened to kill his father. The son was arrested, but later released to a mental health facility.
• Although it did not result in an arrest, a father was forced to shoot and kill his 37-year-old son in April in the Marianna Villas. Villager Robert Tyrrell told law enforcement he had acted in self defense.
Robert Tyrrell Jr. had been arrested previously in a family altercation. In 2010, when the Tyrrells had been living in Villa Rica, Ga., he had been charged with aggravated assault and false imprisonment after he held his mother hostage for failing to iron his clothes. Billie Jo Tyrrell told officials she couldn’t get her iron to work and she was trying to read the instructions when her son became irate, pulled out a gun and took his mother’s keys. He held her hostage for six hours. She eventually escaped and went to a police station.