I got along great with my neighbors until John Hall moved in next door.

He had points against him moving in because he pushed his father, Jack Hall, out of the house he’d owned his entire life. We all pitched in, but Jack was getting to the point where he couldn’t handle things on his own. So it made some amount of sense, but it still felt awful to come home one day and discover Jack had been stuck in some nursing home before we could say goodbye.

That was only the start. John started throwing parties. Lots of people in beat up old cars attended and they went late into the night, often with frustratingly loud music. I tried to be understanding, but I couldn’t put up with it forever.

John laughed and flipped me off the first time I talked to him so I got the neighborhood association involved. They fined him, but he refused to pay since his father had signed the agreement, not him. I called the police, eventually, in the middle of one of his parties, and a bunch of people got busted for drug possession.

We got a couple years of peace out of that, but Jack was eventually back and John had passed away in the meantime. Instead of throwing parties, he started planting bushes that grew onto my property and sued about property lines. After he lost and had to trim his hedges, he started throwing things into our yard to get our dogs to eat them. Which is why I went over there today to confront him. He said he hoped our dogs died so I decked him.

-Statement to the Police regarding assault at 81 Oak Tree Lane on June the twenty-seven between one John Hall and one Lawrence Henderson.