SPRINGFIELD TOWNSHIP, Ohio -- In the middle of an argument with Shalisha Garrett outside Finneytown Middle School, where he was dropping off his daughter for school, Richard Eberhart looked down and saw a gun in the woman’s lap, he said.
"She goes, ‘Yeah, we gonna handle this (expletive),'" he said.
According to Eberhart, Garrett had followed him and his daughter to the school and begun to harass him about an argument between their children.
"I understand kids fight, and that’s something that the kids have to work out, but to be a bigger grown-up -- we could’ve talked about it, but she didn’t want to talk about it," he said.
Garrett’s sister, Timeka Hall, admitted that the scene had become combative.
"My sister did tell her daughter to get out the car to fight his daughter," she said.
When Eberhart saw what appeared to be a gun in the vehicle, he panicked.
"In my mind, I started thinking quick," he said. "The only thing I could think was to grab my daughter and pull her to the back wheel well."
Garrett took off soon after, and although Finneytown parents received a notice about the incident, police did not locate a weapon in either her car or her home.
Garrett was nevertheless charged with two counts of aggravated menacing and one count of brandishing an object that appeared to be a firearm in a school zone.
Finneytown Local Schools superintendent Terri Noe said the incident was not a concern for the district.
