JONESBORO, Ga. — Three people are in custody after police say a neighbor opened fire because a child threw a football on his lawn.
Channel 2's Tom Jones was there when all three of the neighbors went before a Clayton County judge Friday.
While police said the case is about a football on one neighbor's grass, the neighbors told Jones this is about so much more.
Anthony Ealy, 49, said he loves his grass and hates when anyone walks on it.
His wife told Jones the neighbors' children keep doing just that.
"He's asked them several times please don't walk across my property. So he just went ahead and put up some barbed wire," Ealy's wife said, who did not give her first name.
Clayton County police said Ealy became so upset Thursday he pulled out a gun and fired a shot.
Police arrested Ealy after they said he hit his neighbor and his wife after they came out and complained about him threatening the children.
The neighbors, Lamont Hammond and Jennifer Schnell, were also arrested in fighting Ealy.
"No one was ever on his grass," one neighbor said.
A relative of the children did not want to be identified but said it started when her grandson shook Ealy's barbed wire fence.
She said that's when Ealy started fighting and then shot his gun.
"And for him to do what he did it's only grass," the neighbor said.
"So why did he shoot his gun?" Jones asked Ealy's wife.
"That was in self-defense," she said.
Ealy's wife and a neighbor said he was the one attacked and was only defending himself.
They said the neighbors have caused havoc in their community and say Ealy was just fed up.
"It's not something as simply as a football, cause he would have handed the football back," neighbor Alvatina Upshaw Lee said.
No one was hit by the gunfire. Ealy is being held without bond. Schnell and Hammond were given $5,000 bond.
Posted By: DAVID JOHNSON
Friday, April 6th 2012 at 9:55PM
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