After witnessing a car crash, a good Samaritan grandmother first checked on the victims, and offered one of them a ride home who was unable to drive his car.
“My mother said always treat people the way you want to be treated, and that’s what I do,” said Ester Franklin.
But moments after the victim of that wreck stepped out of her car, he victimized Ms. Franklin. She said he reached through her open front window and grabbed her crotch in full view of her grandchildren.
“And I pushed his hand back and said, ‘Why did you do that? Why did you do that,’” recalled Ms. Franklin, still visibly upset by the crime.
She reported it and police charged her attacker.
The crime falls under the umbrella of the top reported crime in East Tennessee: Simple Assault. It joins more than 24,464 crimes of simple assault in 2018, almost doubling the number of reports of theft according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
“It is defined as an offensive touching of the other, so that can be fairly broad. It can be somebody punching somebody, or can literally be somebody grabbing somebody by the shoulder and jerking them sideways,” explained criminal defense attorney T. Scott Jones.
Jones represented Ms. Franklin in her case and said the reason we see so many 'simple assaults' boils down to the broad definition under the law. It is a misdemeanor that typically carries at most a sentence of 11 months and 29 days, and the bulk of the people convicted land on either unsupervised or supervised probation.
"One of the good things our Attorney General’s office has done is basically created programs so that we don’t have recidivism and a repeat of this type of behavior... managing emotions nonviolently, anger management requiring folks to get some counseling so they don’t repeat these mistakes,” said Mr. Jones.
Simple Assault 24,464
Drug/Narcotic 19,295
Vandalism 14,246
Drug/Narcotic Equipment 14,081
Theft 12,651
You can read the full 2018 crime report at this link.
READ MORE: