Police: Woman had 3,500 weapons, tortured neighbors

Investigators say a Brooksville woman violated her probation – at least 3,500 times.

Police say Nickcole Dykema is on probation and shouldn't have had any weapons in her home. But, investigators discovered more than 3,500 knives, swords and blades, a satanic-like shrine, fake bloody body parts, and that's just what evidence techs have tallied so far.

It all came from a home on Eldorado Avenue in Brooksville, where neighbors say Dykema has been terrorizing them for months. She's now in jail, but residents worry how long she'll remain locked up.

"I was just petrified all the time," says neighbor Dorothy Clagg.

Clagg says living next to Dykema isn't her idea of a peaceful retirement, it's been torture. "She had a habit of banging on the inside of her house all the time on the walls, and screaming and hollering," says Clagg.

Dykema is caught on Paula Deford's home security cameras slashing screens and slicing up the air conditioner unit. "She cut all the screens on these windows in one incident," says Deford.

That's what brought investigators to Dykema's house on Tuesday night to arrest her. She shouldn't have a single weapon. She's on probation after being caught shoplifting at Dollar Tree in December, stealing chef knives with a sword down her pants and dagger around her waist.

"Everyone in this neighborhood was scared of that woman everyone around here," says neighbor Fuzz Spisok.

But Tuesday night's discovery even stuns investigators: thousands of weapons hanging from the walls, ceiling fans, and stabbed into a mannequin head.

"How did she get all of those knives," wonders Spisok.

10 News asked the Department of Corrections. Dykema is on probation until February of next year, but the agency says "a state probation officer made all the required field visits to the offender's addresses during her time on supervision."

"I never saw anyone come over there to check on her anything," says Clagg.

It took investigators 5 hours, 2 rounds of bean bag bullets and a stun gun to take her into custody where neighbors hope she'll stay. "I don't want her to come back and terrorize the neighborhood, because that's what she has done," says Deford.

The sheriff's praises his deputies who used restraint not to kill her as she allegedly swung at them with swords.

"She definitely tried to swing at one of the sergeants with a very large weapon. He would've been well within his rights to both legally or morally, and ethically to use deadly force on her. The fact that he didn't is his call," says Sheriff Al Nienhuis. "It's by the grace of God that everyone went home safe."