Story Archive

Don’t Make Mom Mad

Sherrie Gavan says she discovered her 18-year-old son was doing heroin, and when she turned over text messages from her son’s phone indicating where he got it, police did nothing. So she took matters in her own hands. When Gavan located Joshua Loyd, 21, he was climbing out of his car. Gavan approached and told him to leave her son alone. Then, according to Gavan, he reached into his car and started approaching her. “He had something in his hand,” she said. “I didn’t know what it was.” So the 4-foot-11, 115-pound Gavan said she struck Loyd with a baseball bat. Loyd’s father, however, says that Gavan slammed on her brakes, jumped out of the car and immediately started swinging the bat at his son’s head, and that he used his elbows to block the blows. Gavan has been charged with assault and faces a year in jail; her only evidence that Loyd was a drug dealer was those text messages; Loyd’s father says his son is a drug user, not a dealer. “I think it’s ridiculous,” said Nicole Vaporean, 20, who protested Gavan’s arrest. “The police should have done more.” (MS/St. Louis Post-Dispatch) ...And the vigilantes should do less.