A 22-year-old Ocala woman remains in the Marion County Jail after a wild altercation with Ocala Police officers who were arresting her for trying to steal the vehicle of a couple who stopped to help her with a flat tire.
Officers arrived at the area of the BP gas station, 3820 NW Blitchton Road, on Thursday night to find Harley Gant being held to the ground with her arms pinned by a man who witnessed the incident and stepped in to help. Gant was detained in a patrol vehicle while the officers interviewed the victims and witnesses, according to the OPD report.
The male victim told officers Gant assaulted his girlfriend and jumped into his car and tried to steal his car keys. He said he was stopped at the stop sign at NW 38th Avenue and NW Blichton Road when he and his girlfriend were approached by Gant, who asked for help changing a flat tire, according to the OPD report.
The victim said his girlfriend was trying to assist Gant when she used a small black baton to assault an unknown black female who was standing nearby. The victim said they decided to vacate the area because they didn’t want to be involved, according to the report.
The victim said he and his girlfriend tried to drive away when Gant jumped through the front passenger window of his white Honda CRV, yelled “Give me your (expletive deleted) keys,” and grabbed them. He said he got them back, and he and his girlfriend ran by foot to the nearby Motel 6 and asked staff to call police, according to the report.
The victim said he and his girlfriend went outside and saw that Gant wasn’t standing near the vehicle, so they started to walk back towards it. At that point, Gant walked to the car and struck it multiple times with the baton. An officer observed numerous dents on the vehicle, according to the report.
While the officer was interviewing the victim, Gant was screaming obscenities in the rear seat of the patrol car. The officer looked in and saw Gant holding something in her hand that he identified as a cigarette lighter. The officer told Gant to give it to him, but she instead tried to burn a seat belt with the lighter. The officer directed her to relinquish the lighter, but she refused. Gant then braced her foot against the vehicle door while the officer forcibly pulled her from the vehicle. The officer observed a burn towards the bottom of the seat belt, according to the report.
Upon getting Gant out of the vehicle, the officer tried to grab the lighter from her. At that point, she opened her mouth and tried to bite the officer, who pulled away as he felt her top teeth on his left hand. Other officers assisted and Gant was detained using the WRAP restraint system, according to the report.
Police interviewed the female victim and the witness who detained Gant, and both gave similar accounts of the incident. The victims said that while they were trying to help Gant, they noticed she had two young children in the back of her vehicle. The children were placed in the custody of their grandmother and the Department of Children and Families was notified, according to the report.
Due to the possibility that Gant was under the influence of narcotics, she was taken to Advent Health before being transported to jail. She was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, burglary of an occupied conveyance, petit theft, battery, battery on a law enforcement officer, and two counts of criminal mischief. She’s being held on $25,000 bond and will answer to the charges in Marion County Court on May 21.