An 81-year-old woman from Florida finds herself in police custody following an altercation where she allegedly pepper-sprayed a mother and her two daughters, aged 3 and 6. The incident unfolded in Ocala when the young girls were playing with bubbles in their own yard, away from a fence that separated their residence from that of the accused woman, Ada Anderson.
The mother, April Morant, recounted the distressing events to local news outlet WESH. According to Morant, Anderson began by hurling a racial slur at them before leaning over the fence with an object in her hand. Morant, fearing for their safety, initially mistook the object for a gun. She described the moment as startling as Anderson proceeded to discharge the pepper spray towards them.
“What went through my head is I thought she had a gun,” Morant said in her interview with WESH. “So I literally kind of jumped, it startled me ’cause when she was to the fence, she was over the fence like this, and I didn’t know what was in her hand, cause I’m looking at her really quick, and then she sprayed it.”
Morant said the family has had problems with Anderson since they moved into the neighb orhood last November.
“I feel like she’s escalating,” she said. And now, she said, “Bubbles. Literally. The bubbles put her in a whole other arena whatever going on with her mind.”
She said Anderson has hurled insults and slurs at the family “since day one,” and she shared a video with WESH in which a woman shouts a racial slur.
Anderson did not respond to attempts for comment, but she is heard on body camera footage of the arrest asking “when do I get the pictures back that I can show you what they’re doing?” She also told the officers they had no right to arrest her.
An affidavit says that Anderson told deputies the children were “running up and down the fence and yelling at her” so she sprayed the mace at them from her front porch, which is about 40 feet from the fence, and said the mace did not hit the girls, according to Law&Crime. The 6-year-old told deputies that it did and that it made her “nose hurt.” The deputies also noted remnants of the mace on the fence and said that it irritated a deputy’s nose and throat.
Anderson was charged with three counts of battery, second or subsequent offense, and released on a $6,000 bond. She is due in court again on July 1. Records show that she was previously arrested on aggravated assault and stalking charges in 2019 and 2017. The assault charge was related to another neighbor dispute, but prosecutors declined to pursue the case.
Morant wolt WESH she’s now seeking a restraining order and raising money to try to move away.
