Photo: Brittany R. Brown
A Gassville woman, who was originally charged with throwing her then 69-year-old grandmother to the floor and kicking her repeatedly in the face and head in 2017, was back in Baxter County Circuit Court Monday.
Thirty-five-year-old Brittany R. Brown pled no contest in late May 2018 to charges stemming from the attack on her relative and was put on probation for six years.
She was in court Monday facing the third revocation of her suspended sentence.
She was found to have violated the terms and conditions of her probation and was given a three-year prison sentence.
Brown wasted little time in violating probation the first time. The initial revocation petition was filed in late July 2018 — about a month after she was sentenced — alleging Brown failed to report to her supervising officer as directed, was no longer living at her approved address and had been avoiding all contact with her probation officer.
The revocation was reduced to a contempt of court charge, and Brown was given 89 days in jail. The second revocation petition was filed in early February last year. As with the original petition, the second was also reduced to contempt, and she was sentenced to 180 days in jail.
Brown picked up a new drug-related charge in March last year, and the most current revocation petition was filed after that arrest and then amended Oct. 6. In the newest petition, Brown is accused of possessing methamphetamine and paraphernalia used to ingest the drug and not living at her registered address.
It was also alleged in the petition that Brown had been living with the victim of the attack, violating a requirement she have no contact with her grandmother.
The drug charges were filed after Brown was arrested March 2 when a Mountain Home police officer was driving behind the Goodwill Store and Donation Center and reported seeing a red SUV parked near a dumpster.
As the officer pulled beside the vehicle, he said a male and a female climbed out of the dumpster.
The female was identified as Brown. The officer found a substance field testing positive for methamphetamine and a glass smoking pipe in a purse on the floorboard of the passenger side of the vehicle, where Brown had been sitting.
Brown was arrested and taken to the Baxter County Detention Center. No illegal items were found on the male or in the vehicle itself, and he was allowed to leave.
The case that started it all was set up after Brown attacked her grandmother at the older woman’s home in Gassville in June 2017.
According to court records, the grandmother had custody of Brown’s children. They were put in her care by the Arkansas Department of Human Services (DHS), because of Brown’s alleged “extensive methamphetamine” use.
In addition, in an affidavit filed by Brown’s grandmother seeking an order of protection at the time of the 2017 incident, she said when Brown’s two youngest children were born, they were reported to have had high levels of methamphetamine in their systems.
Brown’s grandmother wrote in the affidavit accompanying the petition for the protective order that DHS placed the children with her, rather than put them in a foster home.
It was indicated by the grandmother — the young children’s great-grandmother — that at the time Brown was charged for fighting with her relative, she would not accept responsibility for the loss of the children.
About two month after it was filed, Brown’s grandmother asked the court to dismiss the petition for the protective order. She was also reported to have requested the prosecuting attorney’s office drop charges against her granddaughter for attacking her, which prosecutors refused to do.
A Gassville police officer investigated the 2017 altercation. He interviewed the grandmother, and she reported Brown had come to her home about 9:30 in the morning, in what was described as an agitated state.
The grandmother said a verbal argument broke out first and then escalated into a physical confrontation. In court records, the grandmother said Brown has attacked her before, but never to the extent as in the altercation in June 2017.
At some point, the grandmother called for her daughter, who also lived in the residence and is Brown’s mother, to come help her. The mother was reported to have ended the confrontation by making her daughter leave the residence.
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