A Winona woman was sentenced to five days on house arrest and six months of probation for a fight that occurred inside SuperValu.
Madeline Woods was charged with simple assault and disturbing the peace for the incident. She went before Judge Alan D. Lancaster Thursday morning in Winona Municipal Court.
Mary Jones testified that Woods and a friend were in SuperValu and Woods was trailing behind her. She said she and Woods came face-to-face and according to Jones, Woods poked her finger in her forehead and she swung on Woods.
A melee broke out between the two and Woods was taken out of the store. Jones told City Prosecutor Putt Crull, Jr. that she had no idea why Woods would want to fight her. However, she did say the two had an exchange on Facebook where Woods posted a status and Jones said she “laughed” at the post, by clicking the ‘ha ha!’ emoji.
After a brief explanation of how ‘liking,’ ‘commenting’ and ‘posting’ works on Facebook to public defender Lee Bailey, testimony continued.
Woods friend Mary Hunter testified that Jones is the one who made a post about Wood’s family saying disparaging things about Wood’s children, parenting and home life.
Woods herself testified that Jones’s friend is in a dating relationship with her son and she put the couple out. She echoed what her friend said about Jones’s comments about her family. She said she told Jones to stop making comments about her family and Jones hit her, but didn’t really connect, scrapping down her face with her fist.
She said at that moment, she let her emotions get the better of her and it’s not something that she would do.
Because Woods recently lost her husband and is the primary caretaker of her home, Lancaster sentenced her to five days of house arrest and six months of probation. He also forbade Jones to have any contact with Woods.
Also, Miguel Collins was charged with disturbing the peace for an incident that took place at Subway back in October that happened over the way Collins wanted his sandwich – he wanted six pickles and three onions. He was also charged with simple assault but that charge was dismissed.
Patricia Burrell, manager of Subway said she went outside to tell Collins the next time he came into the store, he’d better be nice to her employees. She said Collins followed her back inside and was using vulgar language. She said there were several patrons who came to her aid while the incident was happening.
Burrell said that Collins grabbed her, causing her to bruise. She said she has a condition like leukemia and if she bumps into anything she bruises really badly.
Collins acknowledged that he was particular about the way he wanted his sandwich, because he was paying for it. But, he wasn’t rude because he doesn’t like to rude to people to fix your food. He said everything was fine until Burrell came outside. He said the tone she used was a harsh one and he did get mad but he didn’t put his hands on her.
Lancaster found that Collins did disturb the peace but he dismissed the charge of simple assault stating that by Burrell’s testimony alone, who stated she didn’t think he meant to. Collins was also ordered not to return back to Subway.
In other cases:
William Sanders was sentenced to 10 days in jail for domestic violence-simple assault (2nd Offense). Sanders was ordered to serve the time on the weekend but was allowed to skip the Christmas holiday.
Jaquander McCaster was found guilty of simple assault and ordered to pay a fine and restitution for damage done to April Jackson’s car.
