A nasty battle over supplies on a hospital cleaning cart left an Ocala woman behind bars last week.
Ocala Police officers were called to West Marion Community Hospital on the night of Jan. 6 and when they arrived, a security officer told them that two employees had been involved in a physical altercation and had been separated into different rooms.
The first employee said she was in a breakroom when 67-year-old Roxanne Jones pushed her cleaning cart in front of her, preventing her from walking down a hallway. She said they got into a verbal disagreement about taking items off the cleaning cart, a police report states.
The employee said she asked Jones to stop and move out of her way, but she refused to do so. She said she called Jones a derogatory name and she responded by striking her right eye, the report says, noting that the woman had swelling and redness on her face.
Jones told officers that she has had an ongoing issue with the woman using items off of her cleaning cart. She said they got into a verbal altercation because of an item missing from the cart and Jones claimed the woman took it, the report says.
Jones said she got upset when the woman called her the derogatory name and admitted to hitting her in the face with a closed fist. She said she got so angry that she lost control and swung at the woman, hitting her in the right eye, the report says.
An officer attempted to obtain video footage of the incident but was told by the security officer that the police department would have to subpoena it. The woman said she wanted to press charges and Jones was then taken into custody and transported to the Marion County Jail, where she was charged simple battery. She was released early Tuesday morning on $1,000 bond and her next court date hasn’t yet been set, jail records show.