Deputies responded to apartments on Foster Avenue in Laytonville.
October has been designated Domestic Violence Awareness Month in the United States, and the Mendocino Sheriff’s Department has announced three recent arrests that perfectly demonstrate that violence in the home is not only a problem of men attacking a weaker spouse (which is by far the most common occurrence) but can also happen when a woman attacks her husband or boyfriend.
As Saturday, October 11 passed into the early hours of Sunday, the Sheriff’s office was called at 1:40 am on reports of vandalism to an apartment home on Foster Avenue in Laytonville, a small community along Highway 101 in inland Mendocino County, north of Willits. A mirror of a vehicle had been damaged by someone in the middle of the night. Responding deputies found first, however, an intoxicated woman in front of a nearby business – most likely the Chief Smokehouse and Laundromat, which is just around the corner. The woman, identified as Vanessa Ann Winters, 34, also appeared to have been recently assaulted. She had a swollen face and dried blood around her nose and lips. She told the deputies she had been attacked by her boyfriend at the apartments they had been headed to.
Susan Irene Mason booking photo
They arrived at the location, and detained the suspected attacker, a 37-year-old man. However, witnesses to the incident told a different story. The deputies took statements that said Ms. Winters had done the damage to herself, pounding her head against a door frame and wall in an apparent attempt to implicate the man as a domestic abuser. They said she had also attacked him, biting him in the arm and putting a lit cigarette out on his head. And while she left, she damaged the mirror to a neighbor’s car, who reported the vandalism originally.
Vanessa Winters was booked for committing corporal injury to a spouse or co-habitant (domestic violence), vandalism, and falsely reporting a crime. Her bail was set at $25,000 at the Mendocino County jail.
Deputies were called to these apartments where Susan Mason was arrested.
A few days later, on Friday October 17, deputies were sent to an apartment complex on South State Street for a welfare check at 8:41 in the morning. They arrived and contacted a man there who said he had been in an argument with his girlfriend, which had turned physical. He said he had been hit in his ear by a plate she had thrown at him, but he did not want any medical help for the injury. His girlfriend, 43-year-old Susan Irene Mason, was arrested and charged with felony domestic violence battery. She was booked at Mendocino County Jail with bail set at $25,000.
Rhonda Ann Motts
Later that same Friday, at 9:36 in the evening, deputies were sent to the Woodside RV Park along Highway 1 in Fort Bragg, in the southern part of town near the famous Botanical Gardens. They were sent on reports of an on-going domestic violence incident. When the arrived they contact a 44-year-old man, who had visible injuries to his neck and chest, which showed signs of bleeding due to scratch wounds.
He told them he and his wife, 43-year-old Rhonda Ann Motts, had been arguing, and she then attacked him physically. He said she had since run away.
Banner posted on Rhonda Motts Facebook page.
Rhonda Motts is on active summary probation out of Mendocino County for assault with a deadly weapon charges. That charge may be related to two prior arrests, according to records, on domestic violence assault in May of 2011 and September of 2012. Ironically, Eric T. Motts, presumably Rhonda’s husband, was also arrested on domestic violence charges the same time she was in May 2011. Details of that incident were not available, and victims are never identified by law enforcement, but it seems likely they were both charged in a fight with each other. Eric was also arrested for possession of an assault weapon in September 2012, around the same time as Rhonda’s other domestic violence booking.
But last Friday night, deputies at their RV park home did not have to wait long, as Rhonda was spotted returning to the home. She was arrested for corporal injury to a spouse or co-habitant, and probation violations. Her bail was set at $30,000.00.
