BOSTON — As if evictions didn’t sting enough already, a Western Massachusetts woman is accused of unleashing a hive of bees on sheriff’s deputies enforcing one last week.
The Hampden County Sheriff’s office accuses Rorie Susan Woods, 55, of Hadley, of pulling up to an ongoing eviction on Memery Lane in Longmeadow the morning of Oct. 12, stirring up some bees from manufactured hives pulled in a trailer behind her blue Nissan Xterra SUV and then unleashing them on deputies.
Woods was arrested and charged with four counts of assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon; three counts of assault by means of a dangerous weapon and a charge of disorderly conduct.
“(T)his woman, who traveled here, put lives in danger as several of the staff on scene are allergic to bees,” Hampden Sheriff Nick Cocchi wrote in a Wednesday statement. “We had one staff member go to the hospital and luckily, he was alright or she would be facing manslaughter charges.
“I support people’s right to protest peacefully but when you cross the line and put my staff and the public in danger, I promise you will be arrested.”
According to a statement from Cocchi’s office, one deputy tried to stop Woods from continuing to unleash more bees but had to stop when the agitated bees swarmed the area. Woods then allegedly “smashed the lid, and flipped a hive off of the flatbed.” She then allegedly donned a beekeeper outfit and carried another hive up to the front door of the home where an eviction process had been ongoing for “the better part of two years.”
Woods relationship to the home in question was not immediately apparent from the Sheriff’s office release, but her history with eviction is public record.
Woods filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in federal bankruptcy court on July 10, 2018, with her forcible eviction from her West Street home in Hadley scheduled for the next day, according to court records.
The owners of the home, Alinas Real Estate LLC — Wells Fargo had foreclosed on the property in May 2017, according to another court doc, and Alinas purchased it in the subsequent auction — carried out the eviction as scheduled and “removed the Debtor from the Property, and removed a majority of the Debtor’s personal property and placed it in storage,” according to a summary of the case by federal bankruptcy judge Elizabeth D. Katz.
In a complaint Woods filed shortly after her evictions, she had been “expecting a thirty day stay against eviction due to her bankruptcy filing, and was entirely unprepared to be ousted from her home.” At the time of her ouster, “Woods was prevented personally from recovering her flock of chickens,” her complaint states. Following her eviction, she was left “homeless, and spent last night in a tent in a farm field alongside her chickens.”
Woods had been diagnosed, according to her complaint, with a medley of health problems ahead of her bankruptcy, including multiple cancers.
Both Sheriff Cocchi and Robert Hoffman, the office’s chief deputy of civil process, noted in their release that their Sheriff’s department had attracted national attention during the pandemic for humane treatment of tenants during evictions.
“We truly try to help everyone we are court-ordered to evict and the New York Times even documented the Sheriff’s humane eviction process during the pandemic,” Hoffman wrote.
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