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Staff report
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Anita S. Torres, aged 59, found herself under arrest yesterday following allegations of unlawfully entering her neighbor’s screened utility area and discharging a firearm.
Shortly before noon on March 25, an officer from the Gainesville Police Department arrived at a residence in the Highland Court Manor neighborhood. The male resident reported that he had gone outside after his partner heard a disturbance in their screened utility room attached to their house. Upon inspection, he discovered Torres’s unoccupied wheelchair outside the area and noticed a broken glass door.
The male resident claimed that Torres was armed. When he confronted her, she allegedly began yelling and then returned to her wheelchair. Concerned for their safety due to the presence of a firearm, he instructed the female resident to contact the authorities.
Both residents informed the officer that Torres approached their front door, shouting accusations that they were on her “uninhabited property.” However, they clarified that Torres neither resides in nor owns the property in question. Her listed address is located nearby their home.
A search incident to arrest reportedly produced a live round in Torres’s pocket that matched the round in the loaded .45 caliber firearm.
The officer reported that a shell casing was found inside the victims’ utility room, and a hole had been shot into the rear glass door; the round traveled through the glass and through a metal shed in the victims’ back yard, but the officer was unable to find where it landed. The officer noted that there is a home directly behind the victims’ home, and the round could easily have entered another home or injured someone.
Post Miranda, Torres reportedly admitted to going to the victims’ home, firing a round, breaking the glass window on the utility room door, and reloading the gun. She said she shot the gun because she is tired of the male victim using his mind to torment her dog; she said she was not trying to shoot any person. She said that after shooting the gun, she got back into her wheelchair and went to the victims’ front door, with the gun on her lap. She said she never pointed the gun at the male victim, and he should not have been in fear for his safety.
Torres has been charged with armed burglary, two counts of burglary with assault, and firing a weapon into a dwelling. She has 13 felony convictions (four violent) and 28 misdemeanor convictions (non-violent), all before 2010; she has served one state prison sentence and was released in 2006. Judge Meshon Rawls ordered her held without bail pending a hearing on a motion from the State Attorney’s Office to hold her without bail until trial; if the judge denies the motion, bail will be set at that hearing.
Articles about arrests are based on reports from law enforcement agencies. The charges listed are taken from the arrest report and/or court records and are only accusations. All suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.