LEESBURG — A Leesburg man was arrested for domestic battery after getting into a verbal and physical argument with a female.

Randy Wayne Avery, 37, 4904 E. Armstrong Road, Leesburg, is being charged with domestic battery with a child under 16 present, a level 6 felony and domestic battery, a class A misdemeanor.

On Dec. 6, Avery called Kosciusko County Dispatch and advised the victim came to his Armstrong Road residence and pepper sprayed him, causing his two-year-old child to have difficulty breathing.

An officer with the Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Department went to the residence and observed the female sitting in a vehicle outside. The victim told the officer she had gone to Avery’s residence to see her minor child. She was laying down next to the child and Avery when the two adults got into a verbal argument.

According to the affidavit of probable cause, Avery grabbed her by the hair and hit her in the right side of the face. Avery then dragged the victim off of the bed. The victim pepper sprayed Avery in the face and left the residence. She advised the side of her face and her scalp hurt. The officer observed that it looked as though the female had been grabbed and pulled by her hair.

The officer then went inside the residence and noticed the odor of pepper spray. Avery, whose eyes and face were flush from the pepper spray, advised that the victim had arrived unannounced. Avery said the two got into an argument and the victim grabbed her pepper spray, sprayed it in the air and hit him in the face.

While the officer was speaking with Avery the minor child was still coughing as a result of the pepper spray.

Avery has been arrested for the same crime, domestic battery in the presence of a child, in both 2013 and 2015.

Avery was booked into the Kosciusko County Jail on Dec. 23 with a $6,000 surety and cash bond.