A violent exchange with panhandlers that sent a man to the hospital has resurrected questions about begging for money in Florida’s Friendliest Hometown.
James Temple, 52, of Summerfield and Darrin Jermaine Jones, 50, of Ocala, continued to be held over the Thanksgiving weekend at the Sumter County Detention Center following their arrest Nov. 21 in the wake of the attack on an elderly man at Spanish Plaines Shopping Center. The elderly man used his phone to record the men, who were accompanied by a woman, and urged passersby not to give money to the trio. Temple, who was armed with a metal cane, and Jones, who has a violent criminal history, were apparently enraged and attacked the man, inflicting injuries that sent him to UF Health Spanish Plaines Hospital.
In the wake of the attack, many questions have been raised about the legality of panhandling in The Villages…