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Beating Suspect's Ex-Beau Got Injunction

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By BILLY TOWNSEND

The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 19, 2008

BARTOW - A former boyfriend of Mercades Nichols, one of the girls accused in the videotaped beating of a Mulberry teenager, obtained an injunction against Nichols in fall 2007 for dating violence, court records show.

Jacob Johns, 16, said in requesting the injunction that 17-year-old Nichols subjected him to violence and threats of violence several times after the couple's breakup in October.

In February, Nichols was arrested and charged with aggravated stalking and violating the injunction. The reason: She sent Johns text messages and enlisted Brittni Hardcastle to take Johns a Valentine's Day present to his home, according to a Polk County Sheriff's Office report.

Aggravated stalking is a third-degree felony.

It's not clear whether the state attorney's office is pursuing February's charges against Nichols. Chip Thullbery, a Polk state attorney's office spokesman, said he could not comment.

Hardcastle and Nichols are among eight teens accused in the beating of Mulberry High School student Victoria Lindsay, which was videotaped for posting on the Internet.

Nichols and Johns dated for more than a year. "We were very close," Johns wrote in his court petition, which was filed Nov. 13.

After their breakup, relations grew tense and violent, Johns said.

The boy wrote in the petition that on Oct. 31, "Mercades stabbed me with a pen three times in an attempt to recover a note written between us two."

"The note listed numerous threats of violence that she would unleash upon me after school. The note basically said that after school she would follow me home and a group of boys would jump me."

The petition cites a pattern of threats and violence toward Johns and others associated with him.

After a hearing attended by both teenagers and their mothers, Circuit Judge Robert Doyel granted the dating violence injunction, saying Nichols presented "an immediate and present danger of dating violence" to her former boyfriend and his immediate family.

The order, issued Nov. 27, instructed Nichols to have no contact with the boy and to stay at least 500 feet away from his home in Mulberry.

Doyel's handwritten notes on the order indicate Nichols was not enrolled at Mulberry High School at the time he issued the injunction.

"If the school board allows respondent to attend Mulberry Senior High School, she may attend and participate in activities of the school but shall not speak to, curse, signal, follow, or threaten petitioner," Doyel wrote.

Four months after the injunction was issued, on March 30, Victoria Lindsay was beaten at the home of Mercades Nichols' grandmother, investigators said. Nichols and Lindsay had been staying at the home.

Nichols and seven other teens are accused of luring Lindsay to the home on Calendar Court in south Lakeland and attacking her with the intent of posting the video on MySpace and YouTube.

All eight of the teens face adult felony kidnapping charges that carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Johns and his mother, Peggy Smith, said they are familiar with all or most of the teens accused in the beating.

They said they were not surprised to see Nichols involved in the attack.

Efforts to contact Nichols or her attorney Friday were unsuccessful.

Reporter Billy Townsend can be reached at (863) 284-1409 or wtownsend@tamptrib.com.

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