It was a bizarre day in court on Saturday for the woman accused of ramming her van into security barriers outside of the White House.
Jessica Ford is facing serious federal charges.
Ford, 35, of La Vergne, Tenn., is to make her first court appearance in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia on Saturday afternoon.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, Ford has been charged with three offenses, all of them felonies: Act of Physical Violence Against Property in a Restricted Grounds using a Deadly or Dangerous Weapon (vehicle), which carries a maximum of 10 years, Forcibly Resisting and Impeding Federal Officers using a Deadly or Dangerous Weapon (vehicle), and Damage to Property of the United States in Excess of $1,000, both of which carry a maximum of 20 years.
On Saturday, the 35-year-old from Tennessee kept screaming ‘I want my kids back. I want my kids back’ several times.
“Ms. Ford is actually not a dangerous person. She wasn’t trying to hurt anyone,” Gretchen Franklin, who was Ford’s Public Defender, said.
In court documents, Ford told officers she was going to the White House to visit her husband named James Burris.
Police said Ford claimed the man lived there.
Ford switched things up in court and said she was actually going to visit her fiancée -- President Donald Trump.
“She feels that someone has her children and is not returning them to her,” Franklin said,
On Friday, police said Ford had a gun, but it turned out to be a BB gun that looked like a pistol.
Prosecutors said this is not the first time Ford did something like this.
Ford tried scaling a fence and jumping over security gates last year, according to court documents.
Ford was ordered to stay away from the White House grounds, but police said court order did not stop her from coming back.
“It is crazy. It is crazy. But the fact that a person had these major mental health issues is not a mystery. It’s not a secret,” Franklin told WUSA9. “When people have major mental health issues, there are people who know about it. The time to do something is before it gets to this point.”
Ford’s case was transferred to federal district court, and she is expected to appear in court on Monday.
