A homeless man was arrested Thursday afternoon after a senior citizen who tried to help him reported being open-handed slapped in the face.
Marion County Sheriff’s deputies were called to a home on NE 192nd Place in Ocala where a man told them that 44-year-old Johnny Ray Helms had called him and wanted to work to earn some money. The man said that while Helms was at this house, he started acting “crazy, as if he was under the influence of some kind of drug,” a sheriff’s office report states.
The man said Helms acted “irrational” and became violent, first pushing him and then slapping him in the face with an open hand. The man said he defended himself by pushing Helms and causing him to fall to the ground, the report says, adding that a deputy noted redness on the man’s face where he claimed to have been slapped.
The man told deputies he was just trying to help Helms, who has served time in the Marion County Jail 13 times since January 1996, by giving him some work so he could earn money. A witness also confirmed the man’s story, telling deputies she saw Helms charge him and then slap him.
Helms claimed to have been pulled out of a vehicle, pushed to ground and beaten with pipes by multiple people, though the deputy noted that he didn’t have any injuries to validate his story. He also claimed to have been chased around the yard by several girls but could not describe them or remember anything about them, the report says.
The deputy noted that he believed Helms was “under the influence of an unknown substance” due to his pinpoint pupils and the fact that he “was talking all over the place and not making sense,” the report says.
Helms was taken into custody and transported to the Marion County Jail, where he was charged with battery on a person 65 or older. He was being held on $5,000 bond