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Repair shop's 'help' lands its owner in jail

He boxed in and threatened a driver of a Corvette, police say.

By JOSE CARDENAS
Published September 29, 2006

LARGO - When a belt in her red 1999 Corvette broke down, Maggie Horn quickly pulled into an auto repair shop on Walsingham Road hoping to get help.

What she got instead, say Horn and Largo police, was something completely different.

After a disagreement over moving her car, the owner of Complete Automotive Services, Charles Clayton Wagar, blocked the Corvette in with two other vehicles, menaced her with a baseball bat and spit on her window, police said.

Wagar was arrested on one count each of false imprisonment and aggravated assault.

"I was scared to death," Horn, 37, said outside her home in Indian Rocks Beach on Wednesday.

Wagar, 55, tells a different story, saying that Horn and police are lying.

"This is what happens when you try to be nice and help somebody," he said.

Horn and her husband, Marty, moved from Charlotte, N.C., to Indian Rocks Beach five months ago. She is an interior decorator and he works as a sales manager in St. Petersburg.

Tuesday morning, as she drove east on Walsingham Road, she pulled into the shop at 14570 Walsingham Road, she said.

Horn said she parked on the side of the shop, where she was not blocking traffic, and asked Wagar if he could fix her car. When he said he could not and asked her to move it off the lot, according to Horn, she asked for his help pushing it.

"He comes out swinging a bat, saying, 'I'm going to kick your a--,' calling me ugly, ugly names," Horn said.

According to Horn and Largo police, Wagar blocked in Corvette in with two SUVs, and, while she was in it, spit on it and swung the bat.

"One minute she calls me and tells me she is broken down," said Marty Horn, 36. "She calls me 10 minutes later and tells me the guy is swinging the bat at her. I'm going, 'What in the world?' "

Maggie Horn said she pulled up the top of the convertible and called her husband and 911.

"She is in great panic and great fear for her life," said Largo Sgt. Mark Young. "This guy is standing at her window, screaming and spitting at her car. He was just in a rage."

After five patrol cars responded, Maggie Horn showed officers where Wagar had hidden the bat, she said. They handcuffed him soon after, she said.

By Wednesday, Wagar had been released on $20,000 bail and was back in his shop.

He said Horn could have started the car and moved it elsewhere on the property so other cars could come in and out.

He said he asked her several times.

"She would not move that car," Wagar said. He blocked her with the SUVs in frustration, he said, to show her, "See how it is? You are blocking my driveway so I can't do business."

Wagar and the owners of the business next to his have had conflicts with each other in the past, which led the other business owners to install video surveillance, Young said. He said that surveillance showed Wagar harassing Horn.

But Wagar denies that he swung the bat or spit on the car.

"I never went near her car with (the bat)," Wagar said. "They made it sound like I got a Louisville Slugger and went after her."

Horn said the episode has caused her to fear for her safety.

"I felt like my life was threatened," she said.

Added her husband, who was home from work Wednesday: "That's why I'm not working right now. She's already called me twice today."

[Last modified September 28, 2006, 23:42:21]