Couple "Prepared to Die" Over Busted Nativity
Lesson: do not mess with an old lady's Nativity scene
City of Fort Lauderdale
It's too late to ask him, but we're pretty sure presumed threats of gun violence over a broken Baby Jesus statue isn't what Ghandi had in mind.
A Fort Lauderdale couple who informed the city in a letter that they were "prepared to die" in order to keep code enforement officials off their junk-strewn lawn have told an understandably agitated police department that they didn't mean it like that.
"I was thinking maybe I'd lay down in front of their Bobcat or bulldozer or whatever it is. I understand Gandhi did that and stopped a lot of problems," Helen Dunsford, 65, told the Sun-Sentinel after "polite but insistent" officers questioned her and husband Bill Dunsford, 74, over their poor choice of words.
It all started regularly enough. City officials took exception to the Dunsford's Twin Lakes property, where objects are strewn about and the house still sports a blue tarp from the effects of Hurricane Wilma in 2005. Not satisfied with the couple's response, the city set the usual machinations of the Code Enforcement Department in motion.
The Dunsfords appealed in court for more time, but were denied. A city crew showed up Monday to force compliance, and Helen Dunsford said the men piled three wise men and the baby Jesus from her Nativity scene with other objects, causing them -- and the Dunsfords -- to break.
"This is a Legal Notice from Bill and Helen Dunsford," she then wrote the city. "From this day forward, Bill and I intend to protect our property against trespass by all agents of the City. We are prepared to die if necessary. For years the City has refused to allow us due process..."
The letter then detailed a variety of complaints and claimed that the Dunsfords' Constitutional rights were being violated. Officers showed up to the home Friday, read the Dunsfords a particular few of those rights, and asked exactly what "prepared to die" meant.
They may have been satisfied with Helen Dunsford's little bald activist of an explanation, but not with her effort. The city crew is expected to return Tuesday, but in the meantime members of nearby First Baptist Church and Calvary Chapel have volunteered to help the laid-off auto mechanic and his caregiver wife do some of the work themselves.
