Wanda Derby, a 71-year-old woman from Richland Hills, Texas, who worked for the American Red Cross, allegedly attacked her gay neighbour with her cane Thursday, March 29. She has been charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, enhanced as a hate crime, and assault causing bodily injury.
The day of the attack, Derby posted on her Facebook page that she had “washed her hands clean” of her son Steven after he “sided with the idiots next door.” In another post she wrote that she misses her two sons “who are no longer with me” and said “I have one who no longer matters to me.”
It’s being reported that she has repeatedly assaulted her neighbour Lloyd Guerrero with gay slurs, harassing him and his mother, both in person and online.
Her son’s decision to move in with their neighbour was the motivator for the alleged attack, in which Derby beat Guerrero with her cane on the patio they share at their apartment building while yelling that “he has AIDS and is going to kill her son.”
Guerrero told a Texas news station that he is gay but chooses to keep his private life private and resents being outed so publicly. Derby was arrested and released on $11,500 bail.
The first thing she did when she got home? Posted a “Don’t Mess with Texas” poster on her Facebook wall.
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