An ex-convict allegedly pulled out a switchblade after a dispute in a carline at a local school.
John Henry Burch Jr., 36, of Ocklawaha, was driving a black GMC truck at about 8:30 a.m. Monday at the time of the dispute which took place in the carline at Villages Elementary of Lady Lake, which is located on Rolling Acres Road, according to an arrest report from the Lady Lake Police Department.
A woman in another vehicle involved in a dropoff at the school said Burch’s wife had stepped on her foot while they were both near the carline. The woman who had been stepped on demanded an apology. However, Burch’s wife became “argumentative and aggressive” at the entrance to the school. The other woman got back into a car with her two companions and they began to drive away.
An independent witness saw Burch’s truck “driving erratically” when it “jumped the curb and proceeded to drive on the grass then cutting off” the other woman’s vehicle in the parking lot behind the nearby Best Buy. Burch got out of his truck and confronted the women about the incident at the school. He brandished a knife, which one of the women described as a switchblade. He said he wasn’t afraid to “go back to prison.”
Burch was in a Florida prison from 2007 to 2012, having been convicted of charges including aggravated battery, burglary and grand theft.
He was arrested on three counts of aggravated assault and booked at the Lake County Jail. He was released after posting $16,000 bond.
