Photo: Justin Bryan May
A jury trial set for early next week for a man arrested in July for allegedly making threats and waving a pistol around in the Bidwell Point campground has been continued.
Forty-two-year-old Justin Bryan May of Willow Springs is charged with three counts of aggravated assault, three counts of terroristic threatening, theft by receiving, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.
May appeared in Baxter County Circuit Court Thursday. May’s attorney, Ben Burnett, filed the request for a delay in the start of his client’s trial.
May’s arrest came after Baxter County sheriff’s deputies were called to the campground July 6 to deal with a reported physical altercation.
Several witnesses reported May and a female had been fighting. They told deputies the encounter had escalated from verbal-to-physical.
The woman was reported to have barricaded herself in a vehicle, and May is alleged to have tried to break out one of the windows to get to her.
Several people said they attempted to de-escalate the volatile situation and had asked the combatants to hold down the noise, since there were children in the area.
May is alleged to have disregarded the request and began to fight and threaten the neighboring campers.
At one point, he retrieved a pistol from his tent, started waving it around and began shouting obscenity-laced threats.
There were a number of children at the site, and parents began to take them away from the area because of the violence and profanity.
Witnesses said that at one point, May started beating his head on random items, screaming, cursing and rolling on the ground.
When deputies checked the serial numbers of the pistol, it came back as having been reported stolen from Springfield.
May claimed it was neighboring campers who had been harassing him. He told the deputies one of them punched him in the head, knocking him down, and then several individuals held him down while he was assaulted.
May is free on $25,000 bond.
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