A Pittsburgh mother was arrested, let go, and arrested again after she allegedly assaulted a school teacher.
Daishonta Williams, 29, was arrested on Wednesday, Oct. 18, for smashing the face of Janice Davis Watkins, 46, with a brick. But police had to let her go, because the officers couldn’t reach the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office to get permission to charge her.
She’s being held at the Allegheny County Jail on a $50,000 bond. Her family is working on bailing her out, said her attorney Blaine Jones on Friday.
It seems it all started with a dispute over a cellphone earlier on Wednesday. Williams’s daughter allegedly got into an altercation with Watkins over the phone. Watkins said the girl bit her. The girl said Watkins choked her.
Williams was called to the school, Pittsburgh King PreK-8, Wednesday for a teacher-parent conference. A complaint was filed against Watkins, the state’s child-abuse hotline was notified as well as the Pittsburgh police squad that handles child abuse investigations.
Williams wasn’t satisfied with the school’s response and left upset. She said Watkins “was going to get it later.”
Around 3:15 p.m., as Watkins was sitting in her car on the phone with her mother, she noticed a man and a woman exiting a car and approaching hers. The woman, identified by Watkins as Williams, threw a brick through the car’s open window, hitting Watkins in the face.
Police found Williams within a few hours sitting on a stoop about a mile from the school.
“I ain’t gonna lie. I did it,” she told police.
She said, however, she only punched Watkins and didn’t use a brick.
Watkins suffered a broken tooth and other injuries, said her mother Betty Davis, 72.
“They called her back to the hospital yesterday. So they found something on the scan. I don’t know what it is. She has to go see a specialist,” Davis said.
Police couldn’t charge Williams on their own. District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr. requires police to get his office’s permission before charging violent felonies and some other offenses.
An officer tried to reach the DA’s office on Wednesday, but to no avail. The office’s spokesman Mike Manko said it was because the officer called the wrong number.
Williams was thus let go, but told to expect a criminal complaint in the coming days. Williams told the officers she would turn herself in “on Tuesday.”
She was arrested on Thursday and has a preliminary court hearing scheduled on Nov. 2.
The officers’ “made a mistake and the matter has been addressed so the mistake is not repeated,” said Sonya Toler, the city’s public safety spokeswoman, on Thursday.
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