Edgewater, FL - A bitter dispute between neighbors boils over at the Edgewater City Council meeting, leading to one of them making death threats on video and threatening to kill himself.
56-year-old Leonard J. Towsley was not arrested after making those comments during Monday night's meeting (October 1st), but he was escorted out of the chamber by members of the Edgewater Police Department at the request of Mayor Mike Ignasiak.
In the video posted below (courtesy of the city), Towsley threatened to kill "that piece of [expletive deleted] Hamilton" - a reference to the neighbor he's feuding with - and called two ECC members "lowlifes", but it's not clear in the video who he was referring to.
"I promise my wife that I wasn't going to start any crap until after the elections because I have full confidence that the new council is going to make it right," Towsley added. "But if you two lowlifes get re-elected, all hell's going to break loose."
Three ECC seats are up for re-election in November, but one of those - District 3 - has already been won by Megan O'Keefe because she's running unopposed. It came following her arrest last month during a domestic incident.
The other two seats available are Mayor - where Ignasiak is running against Mike Thomas - and District 1, where Christine Power is trying to hold her seat against Rocky Dorcy.
The dispute centers around a driveway on city-owned property which separates Towsley's Unity Tree Drive property from his neighbor's, according to three charging affidavits from EPD filed last year with the Volusia County Clerk of the Circuit Court.
In all three cases, Towsley was charged with misdemeanors by EPD, including stalking and criminal mischief, but he wasn't prosecuted in any of those.
The affidavits show Towsley allegedly threw pieces of asphalt from the driveway onto his neighbor's property, attacked his neighbor while he was using a weed-eater near his property line and spray-painted the driveway with bright orange paint.
EPD is investigating the incident at the mayor's request.
