Police last week arrested a 71-year-old New Canaan woman by warrant following a long-running noise dispute with a neighbor at their Locust Avenue apartment building.
Both women came to New Canaan Police headquarters on March 10 (a Monday) after the dispute boiled over, according to an arrest warrant application obtained by NewCanaanite.com. The woman who would be arrested lives on the first floor of their building, the other woman on the second floor.
At about 3:30 p.m. that day, the downstairs woman spotted her neighbor on the street “and confronted her” about noise in the building, according to the arrest warrant application, completed by Officer Michael Schnell and signed by a state prosecutor and Superior Court judge. She told police that she’d made five complaints in the past about her upstairs neighbor, the police affidavit said.
Regarding the run-in on the street, the downstairs woman told police that “no verbal or physical threats were made during the encounter,” the affidavit said.
The upstairs woman told police that she’d been walking her dog near the intersection of Locust Avenue at Forest Street when the other “confronted her unprompted and told her to ‘stop banging the pipes,’ ” the application said.
When she tried to walk away, the other “followed her,” it said. In response, the upstairs woman entered an optometrist practice on Forest Street, where the other “followed her inside and continued to harass her,” she told police. The business’s owner intervened and said she would call police, at which point the upstairs woman left the store, the report said.
Shortly after, both women came to report the incident to police. In speaking to the upstairs woman, police found that about two weeks prior, as she was arriving home, the other “was sitting in her car and began honking her horn for an extended period,” the police affidavit said.
The incident “made her feel harassed,” it said.
The downstairs woman corroborated the story, saying she had honked her horn for more than one minute, telling police, “I know that I’m going crazy.”
The downstairs woman “admitted that she knew her actions were wrong but said she could no longer handle the situation,” the arrest warrant application said.
The owner of the business in question, when interviewed by police, said she had heard “yelling from the front of the store” while she was in her office, the report said, and that the upstairs woman could be seen shaking visibly. The business owner also saw the downstairs woman “yelling” at her neighbor and “preventing her from leaving.”
The following day, March 11, police obtained four videos. In one, the upstairs woman parks and exits her car while the other parks next to her and honks her horn for about six seconds, “pausing briefly multiple times before re-engaging,” the report said. In the second video, the downstairs woman yells at her neighbor as the latter walks across the parking lot toward her car, saying, “Why do you do that? Why do you bang on the floor? What is the point of that? You live in an apartment complex, stop! I don’t understand you!” (The upstairs woman left without saying anything.)
The third and fourth videos show the incident at the optometrist, where the upstairs woman asked a store employee: “Can you record this? I am getting harassed by my neighbor. Please record it on your phone. Please. I don’t have my phone with me. This neighbor is following me, and she won’t leave me alone. I am trying to get away from her, and she’s following me.”
In the video, after the upstairs woman asked the other to “please leave,” the latter responded by saying: “I don’t have to do anything you say. You’re not my boss.”
Police obtained an arrest warrant for second-degree breach of peace and the woman turned herself in at 5:48 p.m. on April 15. She was released after promising to appear April 29 in state Superior Court.