The alleged attack unfolded May 31 at around 10 a.m. at the pickleball courts in St. Augustine\u2019s Treaty Park. According to the affidavit from the St. Johns County Sheriff\u2019s Office investigation, Bannister and the alleged victim were mid-match when tensions flared over the \u201cretrieval of a ball.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once the game wrapped, the alleged victim approached Bannister\u2019s son to discuss his \u201cplaying style\u201d \u2014 a conversation that authorities say Bannister cut short by stepping in and striking the victim in the head several times with her paddle, per the report.<\/p>\n
The alleged victim was left with facial injuries, including multiple cuts and \u201csignificant bleeding,\u201d court papers state, as reported by the outlet.<\/p>\n
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Deputies further accused Bannister of providing a false name during the investigation; she was ultimately identified through law enforcement databases and a driver\u2019s license photo, according to the report.<\/p>\n
The outlet reports that Bannister told deputies she was acting to protect her son, according to warrant papers \u2014 but investigators determined there was no \u201cimminent\u201d threat to the child at the time.<\/p>\n
Her attorney, Rosemarie Peoples of the Smith & Eulo law firm, is standing firmly behind her client. \u201cMichelle Bannister is a mom, nurse, and model citizen,\u201d Peoples said in a statement to the Citizen. \u201cShe is wrongly accused of a crime; her actions were needed to stop a violent attempt to attack her young son. I expect that a jury of her peers will fully exonerate her heroic efforts to defend her child.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bannister bonded out on $8,000 and is due back in court next month, according to the report.<\/p>\n
This story Florida Pickleball Match Turns Violent as Nurse Allegedly Attacks Rival With Paddle<\/a> first appeared on Globe<\/a>. Follow Globe on Yahoo<\/a> so you don\u2019t miss what\u2019s coming next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A St. Johns County, Florida, nurse is facing felony charges after she allegedly bashed a fellow pickleball player…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[130438,66752,130439,28,30,29,130437,3129,23890],"class_list":["post-313333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-alleged-attack","tag-alleged-victim","tag-bannister","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-michelle-bannister","tag-pickleball-courts","tag-st-johns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}