A US woman has been jailed for six months after she deployed a swarm of honeybees as a weapon against deputies during a house eviction. A jury found Rorie Susan Woods guilty on four counts of simple assault and battery, along with two counts of reckless assault tied to the incident.
The incident took place in October 2022 when deputies from the Hampden County Sheriff’s Office were carrying out an eviction. Woods arrived on the scene in an SUV alongside a trailer stacked with beehives whilst wearing her beekeeper’s suit. A video clip shared by the authorities showed Woods engaging in a physical altercation with a deputy before breaking open the hive.
“Hey, hey, hey, she has a truck full of bees,” one deputy could be heard yelling while another responded, “What?”
Several officers were stung on their heads and faces, and one even required hospital treatment, according to a report in The New York Times. Additionally, around a thousand bees died during the encounter, with the majority of them crushed as several hives toppled when Woods wrestled with deputies trying to arrest her.
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Mary Saldarelli, Woods’s lawyer, argued in court that her client had experienced several evictions herself and wanted to protect people from predatory lenders.
“It really was just a sincere hope that he would not suffer the humiliation and devastation of going through an eviction, of losing your home,” said Saldarelli.
Woods’ friend was a man in his 80s who was undergoing cancer treatment. He had gone to a local library to see about filing a motion to halt the eviction, while Woods drove with the bees with the intent to attack.
Nick Cocchi, the Hampden County Sheriff, in a statement added: “We don’t just show up to enforce an order. We try to help people through difficult situations. That commitment doesn’t change, even in the face of something like this.”