A 23-year-old Silver Springs man was charged with domestic battery Thursday after he allegedly poked a woman in the chest during an argument.
The victim told a Marion County sheriff’s deputy that the verbal altercation started the previous night when Samuel Zaydock Byrd, of SE 167th Court, told her he would rather have another dog around than the victim’s daughter. The victim said the argument resumed Wednesday morning, when Byrd poked her in the chest several times while yelling at her, a sheriff’s office report states, adding that there were two slightly red marks on the woman’s chest that were consistent with her story.
Byrd told the deputy that he pushed the victim to get her away from him because he was in the corner. He said the victim was mad because he pulled a blanket towards him, and that he didn’t recall all of what was said, the report says.
In a second interview, the victim said she was sitting on the edge of the bed while Byrd was very close to her, and that’s when he poked her in the chest. She said she then tried to leave to go to the Marion County Courthouse to have Byrd evicted, but he took her car keys. The victim said he followed her outside when she was calling 911, grabbed the hand that her cell phone was in and put it in speakerphone mode so he could hear all of what was being said, the report says.
Byrd denied taking the woman’s car keys and grabbing her hand with the phone in it. The deputy then determined that Byrd was the primary aggressor in the incident and arrested him. He was released Friday from the Marion County Jail on $250 bond and is scheduled to appear in Marion County Court on April 9.