William Keith Chartrand, the former longtime sports editor of The Villages Daily Sun who currently teaches school in Marion County, was arrested Sunday night at his Ocala home.
Chartrand, 46, a fifth-grade teacher at College Park Elementary School in Ocala, was booked into the Marion County Jail shortly before midnight and charged with domestic battery by strangulation. He was being held without bond. He has been suspended by Marion County Schools with pay pending the outcome of a District investigation.
Chartrand told Marion County sheriff’s deputies that he and a woman had a “heated” verbal altercation. He claimed the woman came into the den where he was sitting on the couch and started “screaming profanity at him,” the report says.
Chartrand told deputies he went to confront the woman – it’s unclear from the report if he and the woman are married – and they separated for the evening. A deputy then read Chartrand his rights and he said that during the confrontation the woman “got into his face” so he “slapped her across the face with an open hand,” the report says.
Chartrand told deputies he didn’t mean to hit the woman but “lost his cool for a moment.” He also said he “understood what he did was wrong” but claimed the woman started the altercation when she got into his face, the report says.
The woman told deputies that she and Chartrand had been arguing “all day long” and she confronted him about the altercations. She said he pushed her onto a bed three separate times and after the final time he placed his hands around her neck and “squeezed until she felt pressure on her throat,” though her breathing wasn’t constricted. She said she then told Chartrand to leave the property and he struck her with an open hand across her face, the report says.
Deputies noted that the woman had red marks on her neck and chest, as well as swelling on her face. She was assisted by EMS and medically cleared, according to the report.
Chartrand at one time was a regular guest on a sports talk show on radio station AM-640 WVLG and a well-known personality on television cable station VNN in The Villages. After leaving The Villages Media Group, he also hosted an online golf radio show at floridasportstalk.fm covering The Villages, Summerfield, Ocala and Gainesville, according to his Facebook page, which includes a phone of him with golfing legend Jack Nicklaus. His Twitter account says he also is a former ESPN College Gameday assignment editor and Auburn writer for Saturday Down South.
