Photo: Brittany Rae Ann 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 Thursday.
Thirty-five-year-old Brittany Rae Ann Brown pled not guilty to charges that she has once again violated the terms and conditions of her probation handed down in the case stemming from the attack on her relative.
A hearing on the revocation petition is set for Oct. 29.
Brown was sentenced to 72 months probation May 31, 2018, after entering a no contest plea to charges of second-degree battery and endangering the welfare of a minor. The latter charge was filed because the fight with her grandmother was reported to have played out in the presence of Brown’s younger children.
Brown wasted little time in violating the terms and conditions of her probation. A revocation petition was filed in late July 2018 — about a month after she was sentenced. The petition included allegations Brown had failed to report to her supervising officer as directed and no longer lived at her approved address.
The revocation was reduced to contempt of court, and Brown was given 89 days in jail.
A second revocation petition was filed in early February last year and, as with the first petition, the second was reduced to contempt, and she was given 180 days in jail.
The most current petition was filed in March and 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.
The probation officer reported Brown’s mother and grandmother as saying they had not seen her “in a few days.”
The possession charges were filed, after Brown was arrested March 2. A Mountain Home police officer was driving behind the Goodwill Store when he saw an SUV parked near a dumpster. As the officer pulled beside the vehicle, he said a male and female climbed out of the dumpster. The female was identified as Brown.
A substance field testing positive for methamphetamine and a glass smoking pipe were found in a purse sitting on the floorboard of the passenger side of the vehicle where Brown had been sitting.
Brown was arrested and taken to the Baxter County jail. No illegal items were found on the male or in the vehicle itself, and the male was allowed to leave.
The case that started it all stemmed from Brown’s attack on her grandmother that took place at the elder woman’s Gassville residence 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 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 younger children were born, they were reported to have high levels of methamphetamine in their systems.
Brown’s grandmother wrote in the affidavit that DHS had placed the children with her rather than put them in a foster home. It was indicated by Brown’s grandmother – the children’s great-grandmother — that at the time her granddaughter was charged for fighting with her, the younger woman was angry and would not accept responsibility for losing her children.
About two months after it was filed, Brown’s grandmother asked the court to dismiss the petition for the protective order. She was also said to have requested prosecutors drop all charges against Brown. Prosecutors refused the request.
A Gassville police officer investigating the 2017 altercation interviewed the grandmother, and she reported Brown had come to her home in what was described as an agitated state. The grandmother said an argument broke out and then escalated into physical violence. In court records, the grandmother said Brown had attacked her before but never to the level as in the 2017 altercation.
At some point, the grandmother called for her daughter, who is Brown’s mother, and lived in the Gassville residence, to come help her. The mother was reported to have ended the confrontation by making her daughter leave the residence.
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