Ft. White man arrested last week has now been charged with robbery, battery, and attempted sexual battery at Springhill Park

Staff report

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Robert Albert Willette, 54, of Ft. White, has been charged with attacking a woman on August 21 as she walked her dog at Springhill Park (918 SE 5th Avenue). Willette was arrested last week for committing multiple downtown burglaries.

The 64-year-old victim told a Gainesville Police Department officer that she was walking her dog at Springhill Park at 7:15 a.m. on August 21 when a man approached her on a bicycle. She said the man asked her for money, and she said she didn’t have any and continued walking. She said the man looped around and approached her again from the rear, asking to pet her dog. She said she started to walk away but was hit in the head from behind. She said the man punched her several times, knocked her to the ground, kicked her dog, and said he knew where she lived and would kill her dog.

She said he forcibly removed her Apple Watch, necklace, and purse from her body and then yelled at her to get up and said they were going into the woods, where she would perform oral sex on him. She said she was yelling for help, and Willette told her to be quiet and then forced his hand into her mouth, forcing his fingers down her throat and cutting the inside of her cheek; she said she could not breathe. She said he pulled her toward the woods by her hair, but when she regained her feet, she believed that he would kill her if she went into the woods, so she started walking away from him and he did not follow.

The victim suffered a broken arm, a torn rotator cuff, and fractures to her face, and she had to have stitches inside her cheek; the items stolen from her totaled about $1,700.

The victim provided a description of the man, including saying he was missing several front teeth. Video surveillance from a nearby burglary on the same date matched the description provided by the victim, including the clothes the man was wearing. Witnesses also reported seeing a man meeting the suspect’s description at the Wawa on East University Avenue just before the attack, and an officer reviewed the video footage. Witnesses said the man rode south from there on a bicycle, in the direction of Springhill Park.

Other video footage collected from the area showed a man riding a bicycle around the time of the attack, and he was carrying an object that matched the description of the victim’s purse; one video showed a person (who couldn’t be seen clearly) walking away from the park at 7:18 a.m.

The man in the surveillance videos of various burglaries was identified as Willette, and he was arrested for two of the burglaries on August 21; Willette has several teeth missing. The victim positively identified Willette in a photo line-up.

Willete has been charged with attempted sexual battery, robbery, battery by strangulation, and grand theft, on top of his previous charges of two counts of burglary and two counts of petit theft (and a third count of burglary and petit theft for the stolen potting soil mentioned in the previous article). He has eight felony convictions (three violent) and 20 misdemeanor convictions (eight violent); he has served five state prison sentences, with his most recent release in April 2024 after serving an eight-year sentence on a case out of Columbia County. 

Judge Denise Ferrero ordered Willette held without bail on the new charges, pending a hearing on a motion from the State Attorney’s Office to hold him without bail until trial.

Articles about arrests are based on reports from law enforcement agencies. The charges listed are taken from the arrest report and/or court records and are only accusations. All suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.