A 21-year-old was being held with bond after skipping a court date in connection with his arrest last year after an alleged attack at an airbnb in The Villages.
Murphy Robert-Glen Palmer was arrested Tuesday on a warrant charging him with failure to appear. He was booked without bond at the Sumter County Detention Center.
Palmer originally was arrested June 12 after a woman told Sumter County sheriff’s deputies that she had been “abused” by Palmer at an airbnb rental at 2110 Estevez Drive in Villa Vera Cruz in the Village of Santo Domingo. He posted $5,000 bond and was released from the Sumter County Detention Center.
Palmer had been ordered to be present at a mandatory status conference hearing Aug. 29 in Sumter County Court. The judge specifically ordered that the appearance could not be waived and Palmer could not send a lawyer and skip the hearing.
He did not show up.
A pair of letters sent by the court to Palmer were returned by the U.S. Post Office and marked “Return to Sender.” The address to which the letters had been mailed was the address Palmer provided at the time of his arrest – the address of the airbnb.
This particular airbnb rental is owned by a Pennsylvania couple who purchased it in 2021 for $207,500. They also own a villa in Villa De La Vista West, which also appears to be used as a rental. It was also purchased in 2021.
At the time of Palmer’s arrest, a woman claimed that Palmer, who stands 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 185 pounds, “punched her legs with his fists, leaving several small purple bruises,” the arrest report said. She also claimed that he grabbed her left arm and right leg, “digging his fingernails into her flesh and leaving small abrasions on her skin.” The woman’s injuries “were consistent with her claimed mechanism of injury,” the report said. Palmer, who was identified by his Michigan driver’s license, denied “battering or grabbing” the woman.
