A Villager has been arrested in a long-running feud with a neighbor.
Gerald Wilbur Lawson, 78, was arrested on a felony charge of battery at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday at his residence on Bradford Loop in the Village of Sanibel.
Lawson’s 73-year-old neighbor contacted the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office at 11:37 a.m. that day to report that Lawson had struck her in the buttocks with the handle of a lawnmower. She showed the deputies footage from her ADT surveillance system which showed her standing on the irrigation lid on her property watering her new sod, according to an arrest report. The video showed Lawson mowing his lawn and that he “purposely lifts the rear tires of the mower” and “hitting her on the buttocks,” the deputy wrote in the report. The woman had “red marks on the right buttocks.”
A deputy went to Lawson’s home, but the Brunswick, Mass. native refused to speak with law enforcement regarding the matter.
Lawson and his wife purchased their home in the Village of Sanibel in 2011 and their next-door neighbors purchased their home one year later. Though initially friends, the neighbors have been in conflict for several years.
Lawson was booked at the Sumter County Detention Center and released after posting $2,000 bond.
