Photo: Justin Rogers
A customer of the Northeast Public Water Authority took his complaint about the cutoff of his service to such a level that he ended up facing a felony.
Twenty-seven-year-old Justin Rogers of Mountain Home appeared in Baxter County Circuit Court Monday and pled not guilty to the charge against him.
He is alleged to have called the water authority office to complain about his water being cut off and a lock being put on his meter.
The service was shut off for non-payment Nov. 4, according to the utility.
According to the probable cause affidavit, Rogers made a number of profanity-laced comments to a person in the authority’s office.
At the end of the conversation, Rogers said he intended to cut off the lock and restore his service.
Before Rogers hung up, he threatened that if any representatives of the utility came onto his property again, he would shoot them, according to the probable cause affidavit.
He is being charged with terroristic threatening.
NEW CHARGE TRIGGERS REVOCATION REQUEST
The new charge also triggered the filing of a petition seeking to revoke a 20-year probation sentence handed down in mid-November 2019.
In the earlier case, Rogers was accused of holding his then-girlfriend, Kelsie Deardoff who was 26-years-old at the time, against her will, beating, choking and threatening to kill the couple’s unborn baby by stabbing her in the stomach.
At one point during the incident, Rogers was alleged to have prevented Deardoff from leaving the couple’s bedroom. She told investigators she waited until Rogers fell asleep, slipped out with the children, saw a deputy sheriff in his patrol car, flagged him down and reported what had happened.
The charges filed against Rogers as a result of the violent domestic altercation included aggravated assault, domestic battery, false imprisonment and interfering with emergency communications.
VICTIM INITIALLY WANTED CHARGES DROPPED
Almost from the time the charges were filed, Deardoff made efforts to have the case dismissed.
At one point now retired Circuit Judge Gordon Webb did lift a no contact order allowing the couple to began interacting again.
Deardoff stood with Rogers when he was sentenced on the domestic violence charges.
They were reported to have married in October 2019.
According to court records, Deardoff did file an affidavit in June seeking an order of protection to keep Rogers away from her. He filed a petition in July to keep her away from him.
In her affidavit, she alleges Rogers “manipulated me into marriage to keep him out of prison.” Rogers cites a number of factors, including Deardoff’s alleged drug use, as reasons for his petition.
Both affidavits were dismissed in late September as “not meeting the criteria of the Domestic Abuse Protection Act.”
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