Nuisance neighbor with junk in the yard goes to court, given jail sentence; appeal underway

Posted: Oct 6, 2020 / 07:50 PM EDT

Updated: Dec 10, 2020 / 07:29 PM EST

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — For five years, the property on Linshaw Lane has been what James Mock calls a nuisance. He owns a rental property near Williams Smith’s home, the property Mock says is an eyesore.

“The frustration is his property is still an eyesore. We still have to put up with it. When I drove by that property today, there were 12 vehicles on the property that didn’t have any license tags on them at all,” Mock said.

In court, the judge gave Smith a 30-day jail sentence with 15 days suspended along with a fine for his failure to clean up his yard over the course of five years. He faced five summonses for inoperable vehicles, two summonses for recreational boat and jet ski, and one summons for having a junkyard which brings up to a year in jail. The boat and jet ski summonses were dropped because they have been removed from the property. Since Smith appealed the sentence to the Virginia Beach Circuit Court, everything the judge gave him is on hold pending the outcome of the appeal, but he does have to show up in Circuit Court for future hearings.

We asked Smith what is his property going to look like Nov. 19.

“It’s going to look like hopefully not what it looks like now. That’s the only guarantee that I can have. It’s not going to look like it does right now.”

Judge Lisa Hodges noted she gave the jail time because the more than $5,500 in fines “didn’t seem to do the trick.” Smith has been in court multiple times before for the same issues.

Mock added, “Look the city is sick of what he’s doing, the judiciary is sick of it, and the neighbors are sick of it. Nothing gets done and nothing gets resolved. Smith has due process, but the process is due. We need our neighborhood back, and we don’t have it because of Mr. Smith.”

For that, Smith gave this apology: “I’m sorry. For those who live there I’m sorry. I’m the problem. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the attention this had drawn for [WAVY’s] reports, and I’m sorry I’m being unable to fix it, but I will be trying by Nov. 19.”

We asked Mock about that, and the wise words of Yoda from Star Wars came to Mock’s mind.

“As Yoda said, do or do not. There is no try.”