VIERA, Fla. – One of the boys whom the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office said a Viera woman held at gunpoint because he was fishing near her backyard says he was afraid she was going to kill him and his friend.
Donna Elkins, 59, of the Baytree neighborhood, was arrested Friday and faces two charges each of aggravated assault and false imprisonment.
The boy, named Brayden and whose parents wished not to identify him by his last name, said he and his 13-year-old friend dropped to the ground when Elkins, holding a long rifle the boys didn’t know was a pellet gun, ordered them to.
“I’m still pretty shaken up,” the 15-year-old told News 6 reporter James Sparvero. “I just can’t believe it really happened - that I got a gun pulled on me.”
The sheriff’s office said Brayden and his 13-year-old friend were fishing 30 feet from Elkins’ property when she confronted them.
“I was terrified,” the boy said.
Also over the phone Wednesday, Elkins told Sparvero she wants to tell her side of the story, too, but only when she’s ready.
An attorney tried defending her in front of Judge Kelly Ingram when she made her first court appearance Saturday at the Brevard County jai.
“There’s a little bit of an argument that (the boys) could just get up and run away,” assistant public defender Katerina Seiler said. “She wasn’t physically blocking them or anything. She was kind of, allegedly, holding them.”
Ingram disagreed with Seiler’s interpretation of the facts.
“The allegations are she’s holding this gun,” Ingram countered. “She told them, ‘Lay down. Don’t move.’ So I don’t think she needs to physically hold them for false imprisonment.”
Now that she’s bonded out of jail, Elkins said she’s receiving death threats.
