AUBURNDALE — A 32-year-old Lakeland man is in the hospital with a shotgun wound and awaiting charges after deputies say he threw a dagger at a man who then shot him Saturday.
Deputies plan to charge Michael Thomas White, 2809 Old Polk City Road, on unarmed burglary, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and armed trespassing charges when he is released from the hospital, according to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office.
White trespassed on two properties that morning, the Sheriff’s Office said. The first was 2400 Old Dixie Highway and the second, two miles away, at 2605 Saddle Creek Road, according to a PCSO arrest report.
At the second property, a resident found White on her back porch at 7 a.m. with a 12.5-inch double-edged dagger and asked him to leave, the report said. When he wouldn’t, the woman got her husband who brought out a 12-gauge shotgun.
When the husband asked him to leave, he responded that “his sister was a witch and so was burned at the stake on that property, and so the property then belonged to him,” according to the report. White then drew his arm back and threw the dagger, the report said. That’s when the husband shot White in his left arm.
After being shot, White “began dancing and flailing his arms,” the report said, and left going east on Old Dixie Highway.
A deputy found White in the parking lot of Raj Foodmart, 1000 Loop Road, who was uncooperative and incoherent, the report said. White went to Lakeland Regional Medical Center with non-life threatening injuries.