Jury quickly finds Ozark County man guilty of first-degree property damage

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Photo: Johnathan Latham. Photo courtesy Ozark County Times.

It took just 18 minutes for an Ozark County jury to find a Gainesville resident, 48-year-old Johnathan Latham, guilty of first-degree property damage late last month. The case was filed in connection with allegations Latham burned a tractor belonging to his aunt, Judy Latham.

The Ozark County Times reports a sentencing hearing is scheduled for Dec. 6. During the hearing, Latham will also be sentenced in a separate case in which he pleaded guilty in August to damaging jail property.

The case presented to the jury involved Latham allegedly bulldozing and burning a manufactured home and setting fire to a John Deere tractor in April 2016.

When the case was originally filed, Latham was charged with property damage and arson. The charge of arson was filed for the alleged burning of the home, and the property damage was connected to the destruction of the tractor.

The arson charge was later amended to an additional count of property damage. In early October, the property damage charge involving the burned home was dismissed, with the statute of limitations cited.

According to the probable cause statement, Judy Latham contacted Ozark County authorities in April 2016 telling a deputy she had received a phone call from someone telling her Johnathan Latham had demolished a manufactured home on County Road 308A with a bulldozer, and a tractor had been burned and pushed into a pile with the demolished home’s debris.

She explained the property is part of the estate of her late husband, Johnathan Latham’s uncle.

The following day, deputies were reportedly dispatched to the property regarding a domestic dispute, and while on the scene they identified manufactured home parts and part of a tractor that had been pushed into a low area appearing to have been burned. When the officers asked Johnathan Latham about the debris, he reportedly told them he had called in a controlled burn for the property.

Online documents show the address of the destroyed property was the same as Johnathan Latham’s residential address, indicating he had likely resided at the residence for some time despite its ownership by his uncle.

The home was valued at $5,290 by the Ozark County Assessor’s Office, and the tractor was listed with a value of $7,500.

The damage-to-jail-property charge Latham pleaded guilty to was in connection with a May 2016 incident in which he reportedly ripped a communal TV from the wall in the Ozark County jail, shattering the screen and destroyed an overhead light and smoke detector with a broom handle.



Photo: Latham property on County Road 308A in Gainesville taken in April 2016, shortly after charges of arson and property damage were filed against Johnathan Latham in connection with allegations he bulldozed and burned a manufactured home and set fire to a tractor on the property. Photos courtesy Ozark County Times/Jessi Dreckman.

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