Courtney Irby | Florida Woman June 22

Courtney Irby Was Arrested After Breaking Into Ex Husband’s Apartment, Turning In His Guns After He Tried To Run Her Over | June 22

Lakeland: A woman scorned is one that you do not want to mess with. Florida woman Courtney Irby was arrested after she told police she broke into her ex husband’s home days after he tried to run her over.

“Well, he was arrested yesterday for trying to run me over with his car and he is now in jail. So I went to his apartment, since he is in jail, and I searched his apartment for the guns I knew he had and I took them,” Courtney Irby said, according to the report.

The officer asked Courtney Irby to confirm what had happened.

Police said Courtney Irby told them that she searched Joseph Irby’s apartment because she knew he had guns but didn’t know where he kept them. She said she got into the unit through the locked front door.

The day before, the couple had attended a divorce hearing and, as they were leaving the courthouse, they became involved in an argument. Joseph Irby got into his vehicle and started following his wife, who was trying to drive away from the courthouse.

Records show Joseph Irby screamed and yelled at his wife while he rammed the rear end of her vehicle and tried to run her off the road as she was on the phone with police.

State Rep. Anna Eskamani said this case illustrates the need to better support domestic violence survivors.

“The case of Courtney Taylor Irby demonstrates once more the dangerous linkage between intimate partner violence and access to firearms. Court records show that Irby applied for a temporary injunction against her husband and the two were in the process of a divorce. She was actively protecting herself and her family from an estranged husband who had not turned over his firearms to law enforcement, and was arrested for it. We should be outraged by her arrest, and Irby should not be prosecuted by the local State Attorney’s office,” Eskamani wrote in a news release.

Courtney Irby was arrested on charges of grand theft firearm and armed burglary. Joseph Irby was arrested on a charge of domestic violence - aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.