Georgia: Columbia County Code Enforcement Officer Enters Woman’s Bedroom Because Her Lawn Needed Mowing
July 11th, 2012Via: AJC:
What would you do if you found a burly county agent in your bedroom, demanding that you cut your grass?
Erica Masters of Martinez in Columbia County, near Augusta, captured such an encounter recently on her home surveillance camera when code compliance officer Jimmy Vowell entered her bedroom to demand she come out to sign a summons.
“He let himself in and actually came through the house and into my bedroom and yelled at me to wake me up to let me know that I needed to come back outside and sign the violation notice,” Masters told WJBF-TV News Channel 6 station in Augusta.
“I woke up, I didn’t have my glasses on or my contacts in and all I see is this big burly figure standing in my doorway,” she said. “A big huge guy with a grey shirt. It scared the mess out of me.”
The video shows Vowell at the front door, then moments later walking slowly through the home and peering into rooms. Moments later Masters is seen nervously walking through the home.
Vowell, who first denied he’d entered Master’s home, was fired Monday over the incident.
He should consider himself lucky to have merely been fired from his job and not fired at with a gun.
I think the woman was alluding to as much when she said “I woke up, I didn’t have my glasses on or my contacts in and all I see is this big burly figure standing in my doorway,” she said. “A big huge guy with a grey shirt. It scared the mess out of me.”
The fact that he woke her up and the fact that he entered not just her home, but her bedroom, would have given her plenty of legal grounds to argue that she wasn’t criminally culpable if he had been shot.
That’s not even mentioning the fact that the whole incident took place in Georgia.
The guy should have tried that at George Zimmerman’s house.