Gainesville man charged with hitting victim with a piece of wood in Copeland Park
Staff report
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Ronnie Lavern Walker, 65, was arrested yesterday after allegedly hitting a man with a piece of wood at Copeland Park; the victim was transported to the hospital with head injuries.
At about 5:30 p.m. on July 12, an Alachua County Sheriff’s Deputy responded to Copeland Park (7020 NE 27th Avenue), where the victim said he and Walker had argued, and then Walker went into the woods, came out with a piece of wood, and hit him four times in the head with the wood.
The victim reportedly sustained multiple lacerations on his head and was transported to the hospital.
Walker reportedly said he had acted in self-defense after the victim attacked him and punched him multiple times in the face, but the deputy reported that Walker had no injuries that matched his account of the incident.
Walker has been charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. He has one felony conviction (non-violent) and one misdemeanor conviction (non-violent); he was arrested in 2015 for threatening a man with a stick, but the charge was later dropped. Judge Gloria Walker ordered him held without bail pending a hearing on a motion from the State Attorney’s office to hold him without bail until trial; if the judge denies the motion, bail will be set at that hearing.
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.
Like these held without bail arrests.
Don’t be fooled! They’re delaying bail decisions until later so it won’t be in these news reports.
Write to DeSantis about our scummy judges.
We need follow up on them to see what the SA and judges are really doing in these cases. It sounds good here, but what are the real results?
Uh dudes! The jail is not as big as your imagination and it costs serious money to incarcerate someone. Unlike you, judges have to be mindful of these facts and assign resources – jail calls – expediciously. Hey, lobby for more taxes if you don’t like it. No, unless you win an election you can’t stop paying for other services you don’t approve of and just focus on bigger jails, though you can try!
By the way, the US’s rate of incaceration is already the highest in the world among democracies and higher than China’s.
“The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any independent democracy on earth — worse, every single state incarcerates more people per capita than most nations. In the global context, even “progressive” U.S. states like New York and Massachusetts appear as extreme as Louisiana and Mississippi in their use of prisons and jails.”
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/2024.html