Deputy Averts Attack by Using Pepper Spray

A Wilkes County Sheriff Deputy repots he was assaulted this week. Fortunately, the assault was only verbal, but the situation very nearly escalated to blows. Deputy Jonathon Watson was called Wednesday evening to a domestic disturbance on Rock Creek Road in Hays. By the time he arrived, he found a man passed out and his wife packing up to leave. With the situation calmed down, Watson and the unidentified woman left the house. He parked at the Mountain View galaxy a while later, and while he was talking with another deputy, the woman came up to them and said her husband had just celled and told her to get back to the house or he'd come looking for her. She was worried that he'd get in the car, nearly passing-out drunk.



Watson and the other deputy returned with the woman to the house. He says when he walked into the house, the man woke up and seemed pretty confused about what was happening at the time. The other deputy stepped outside to check on a car that had just pulled up, and during that time the man started yelling at Deputy Watson, cursing him and threatening him. The deputy pulled out his pepper spray, and the man, 42-year old Richard Barry Ayers, made threats to Watson if he chose to spray him. Watson says Ayers appeared to be getting ready to take a swing at him, so he shot him with the pepper spray and ordered him to the floor. He was able to cuff Ayers without further incident. After being cleaned up a the jail, Ayres was given a bond of 750-dollars on the cahrges of assaulting an officer and communicating a threat.