Man arrested after threatening Walmart employees with machete
BY JENNIFER CABRERA
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Davonta Maurice Jordan, 26, was arrested last night after allegedly threatening employees with a machete at the Butler Plaza Walmart.
At 6:45 p.m. yesterday, employees of the Walmart at 2900 SW 42nd Street reportedly saw Jordan yelling and acting erratically inside the store. When his behavior escalated, the employees reportedly ordered him to leave the store and then called 911 when he allegedly refused to leave.
The employees then followed Jordan to keep the call-taker updated on his location and actions. When Jordan realized the employees were following him, he allegedly pulled an unsheathed machete from his shopping cart, turned toward them, and asked if they were following him. He reportedly said it was legal for him to injure them with the machete. The employees reported that Jordan had brought the machete into the store in an Aldi shopping cart that was “overflowing” with his personal property; the responding officer noted that it was evident that Jordan was using the shopping cart to store and transport his own belongings with no intention of returning it to Aldi.
Jordan was reportedly found in the parking lot of Walmart by a Gainesville Police Department officer, still in possession of the Aldi shopping cart. The officer reported that surveillance video from inside the store corroborated the account of the Walmart employees.
Jordan has been charged with illegal possession of a shopping cart and armed trespassing. Jordan has one felony conviction and three misdemeanor convictions, along with a pending trespassing charge. He also has five felony counts, going back to 2013, on which adjudication was withheld. He is being held on $25,000 bail.
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.
Bet the Utes couldn’t wait to get back to Utah.
Ah, the city commission, makes us proud to live in Gainesville.
We’ll probably have actual machete attacks in our neighborhoods, sooner or later, with all the MS13-types Biden is letting in. GPD and ASO are busy dealing with all the insane vagrants like this guy and his Aldi shopping cart, so you might need to protect yourself.
DO NOT TRY TO PROTECT YOURSELF! I did and GPD arrested me and charged me with three felonies after I had called them 3 times on a guy threatening and escalating violent behavior with threats of physical harm to me. Said they didn’t see it so nothing they could do. The SA dropped the charges but it took 6 months and no review of the body worn camera evidence of GPD failure to investigate the actual crime of me being beat to a pulp. I personally will never call 911 in this town again.
The guy brought his stolen Aldi Shopping cart with all his crap into Walmart? Oh! He’s a homeless guy!!! I thought GRACE Mkt was supposed to end all our problems after 10 years. No law enforcement saw the guy pushing the hot cart around town?
No cops see the panhandlers in the streets?
So your worried about the police not policing shopping carts? Was it reported stolen by Aldi? I’m pretty sure their has to be a “victim” to have a crime. They could have been throwing it out maybe it had a bad wheel or rusted or somehow not up to their standards, maybe this guy dumpster dove and got it. Once it becomes trash it can not be reported or declared stolen or in your words “hot”. The city and county are short staff on law enforcement officers just as the rest of the businesses but somehow you want them to focus on panhandlers and homeless who are just trying to survive. Until there is a real throughout plan to bring additional resources to help those in need get the proper documentation needed to get hired somewhere, shower, get clean clothes on a regular/daily basis there will forever be a homeless issue not just in Gainesville but across America. Grace Marketplace was never meant to be the be all end all. True enough some people don’t want to work and panhandling is their way of life, but if you take the time to actually get to know someone before passing judgement you would know some are homeless by circumstances and situations. Let’s say you have a family and everyday you get up go work your butt of to provide for them (like most of us do daily) them boom a tragedy happens and you have lost everyone (your wife/spouse, and kids) the reason you get up everyday and work so hard, you know the reason you get up on those days where you want to stay in the bed and get a little more rest but you can’t because your family is depending on you.Yeah your family, you just lost everyone. Now you can’t get up, you miss days at the office, they give you 3 days to grieve and then return to work but your mentally not stable enough to go back so you get fired. We all know 3 days isn’t any time when you have lost a loved one. Now look at you losing your house, car, and everything you worked so hard to have for your family that is no longer there. Your motivation, drive and willingness to push forward is overcome by your mental ability to cope with such loss and tragedy. You know what comes next?? Homelessness, surviving by any means necessary. I say all that to say everyone has a story, situation, and circumStances you know nothing about! Stop judging people by something you haven’t been through. Everyone isn’t the same as you, people won’t grieve like you, they won’t process things like you, and they won’t live life like you! No one is perfect and this man surely made a mistake and I’m not saying what they said he did was right, I’m saying until you have walked 1 foot in HIS shoes or someone else’s you can’t judge him. And if the way they police Gainesville bothers you go sign up they have plenty of jobs waiting for people just like you so eager to solve cart crimes, while they are out here trying to solve murders and crimes that have been reported as such.
We can’t have people going around and threatening others with machetes, regardless of their sob stories. He should be either in jail or a mental institution. Maybe work on your own critical thinking skills if you really believe Aldi is in the habit of throwing away shopping carts in dumpsters instead of fixing a broken part.
Maybe you should work on your comprehension skills Mr. Peabody, because I never said we should allow people to go around threatening anyone with or without a machete. I also never once said that he or anyone else who does this shouldn’t be punished. Do you work for Aldi? Yeah didn’t think so, you have no idea the condition of the “hot” cart he was wheeling around. Since you can’t comprehend very well, my point of saying that was this poster who say the cops should be worried about cart thief’s instead more important crimes, is that why should they bother someone about a piece of property when it more than likely wasn’t even reported stolen? They are staff limited like many other first responders so redirecting limited staff to potential cart thief or respond to a burglary in progress? If it were your home or Aldi’s cart, which would you prefer they pick? Your spouse in distress or Aldi’s cart? Your family member in an accident or Aldi’s cart? How about your business being held up at gun point or Aldi’s cart? Get the picture now? No one is saying doing what he did is okay, and he shouldn’t like anyone be punished for the law he has broken but just like you and I, they are humans too. Don’t act like you’re perfect in every sense.. like you don’t break laws.. go ahead and say it, you stop completely at every stop sign, you never turn right on red without coming to a complete stop first, you most definitely never speed, you yield to any emergency vehicle coming from both directions, you stop behind the stop bar at every red light?? NO ONE IS PERFECT!
The cops don’t care about shopping carts unless they have to arrest someone and figure out what to do with their personal property. Get this guy off the streets and the cops won’t have to keep wasting time with him. Same for those like him.
Please explain “adjudication was withheld.”
The defendant enters a plea of guilty or no contest to the charges, and then the court skips straight to placing him or her on probation without entering a judgment of conviction. The accused is ordered to abide by the terms of probation for a specified period.
Under Florida law, a criminal defendant who is placed on probation with a withhold of adjudication or adjudication withheld and successfully completes that probation cannot be further sentenced for the crime. In other words, successful completion of probation puts an end to the case.
https://www.jaxcriminaldefenseattorney.com/in-florida-what-does-withhold-of-adjudication-mean/
Some people call me “Mah-reece”.