An Ocala woman was arrested four days after a ride home from a local grocery store turned violent.
A woman told a Marion County sheriff’s deputy that she gave 33-year-old Tabitha Blair Offord a ride home from the Winn-Dixie on SE 36th Avenue and Maricamp Road last Wednesday night. She said that during the ride home, Offord “became argumentative and begin to grab her arms and hit her in the face.” The woman, who lives on NE 5th Terrace, also told the deputy that Offord threw coffee on her while she was driving, a sheriff’s office report states.
The woman she said pulled her vehicle over at 2110 SE 36th Ave. and asked for someone to call 911. She said Offord then climbed from her vehicle and “ran from the location,” the report says.
The deputy noted that he didn’t observe any injuries on the woman’s body but did see that the vehicle’s floorboard was wet, which matched her description of coffee being thrown on her.
Offord initially was picked up at her home at 5164 NE 1st Ave. and brought to the woman’s home who reported the incident. She denied having any kind of physical altercation but did admit that she tried to grab the woman’s keys and turn off the ignition while she was still driving, the report says.
Offord eventually was arrested Sunday night at The Vines Hospital in Ocala. She was transported to the Marion County Jail, charged with domestic battery and held on $1,500 bond.
Offord, who is scheduled to appear in a Marion County courtroom on Nov. 20 at 8 a.m. to answer to the charge, is no stranger to the Marion County legal system. She’s been housed in the jail six times since Nov. 1, 2005 when she was charged with resisting arrest without violence. She was back in the correctional facility June 27, 2007 on charges of retail theft and resisting a merchant, jail records show.
Offord also has been in the jail three other times this year. Those arrests were:
- July 16, charged with trespassing/violating a city ordinance;
- Aug. 6, charged with violating a city ordinance; and
- Aug. 18, charged with possession or use of drug equipment.