Masters Incident Gains National Audience

In between appearances on national TV, Martinez resident Erica Masters spoke to the Metro Spirit about the July 2 incident in which Columbia County Code Compliance Officer Jimmy Vowell entered her home uninvited while she was sleeping and told her to cut her grass. Vowell, who initially denied entering the house, was caught on Masters’ security cameras, and the images of the burly man moving through the sleeping woman’s house have gone viral. “I’ve already seen parodies of it on YouTube,” she said. Masters, who has lived in the house for two and a half years, said she had been contacted a year earlier by a different Code Compliance officer about her uncut grass. Each time, she said, her lawnmower was broken, making it impossible for her to cut the grass. “One of the things a lot of people haven’t realized about this when they started making accusations that I should just mow my lawn is that for the past two months I’ve been unemployed,” she said. An aspiring actress, Masters said she installed the cameras after an uncomfortable encounter with a strange man following body paint photo shoot last year. The fact that someone unable to afford to mow her yard could have working security cameras has raised red flags for some in the community, who allege the incident, which ultimately resulted in Vowell’s termination by the county, was somehow premeditated. “A lot of people think that those camera systems cost thousands of dollars,” she said. “The whole system only cost 150 bucks.” Formerly in the military, Masters said she has owned the cameras for four years. She also maintained that her strained relationship with a neighbor, who took her to court over a dog attack, was responsible for the complaints against her. Given the international attention the story has received, Masters said she was planning to leave the county once the dust has cleared. “I can’t trust the county any more,” she said. “Once all this dies down, I’m pretty sure the county is going to try to find some way to get back at me, even it they’re just serving me with tiny, stupid notices. Once this dies down and they don’t have the public spotlight, who knows what they’re going to do to me.” She said she was basing her fear not on the way the county reacted to the situation, but because they hired Vowell, who she discovered had a dubious past, in the first place. “Columbia County hired someone with a negative past,” she said. “And you can’t tell me they did not know about the Richmond County thing, because Richmond and Columbia County share everything.” Vowell resigned from the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office in 2004 after taking a computer from the property room. “I’m satisfied with how the county reacted, but I’m not satisfied with the fact that they needed a reaction,” she said. “They shouldn’t have hired him to begin with. They made a mistake when they hired him.You Might Also Like: