- May 15, 2024
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Feb. 3
I’ll have the .38 special with fries
2:23 p.m. 200 block of Airport Road. Shots fired, non criminal.
Three Florida Highway Patrol troopers were out for lunch, seated on the deck of a local restaurant, when they heard a gunshot.
The troopers bolted from their seats and saw an elderly man standing two or three feet away, looking confused, with a large hole in the cargo pocket of his shorts and the steel muzzle of a handgun protruding from the hole.
The troopers took the man’s gun, removed the spent cartridge and a live round of ammunition, and contacted the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office.
They told a deputy who arrived at the scene that the elderly man had simply been walking along the sidewalk — he wasn’t handling the gun, and didn’t have his hands in his pockets — when the gun went off.
The deputy, searching for fragments of the discharged bullet, determined that it had struck the ground, then ricocheted into a picnic table and through the restaurant’s cloth awning.
The deputy submitted the man’s Cobra .38 handgun as evidence, and told him how to reclaim it later.
March 13
Don’t mind the pot, Officer
9:49 p.m. First block of Pine Hill Lane. Narcotics.
A deputy stopped a car for driving at night without its headlights on.
An 18-year-old in the rear left seat asked if he could get out of the car to smoke a cigarette during the traffic stop.
The deputy told him he could.
But as the young man stood up to get out of the car, a nickel-sized wad of marijuana fell onto the ground at his feet.
Deputies also found loose pieces of pot in his pocket and on the seat of the car where he’s been sitting.
The arrested him for possession of marijuana.
April 13
Officer, Stop that man! He stole my drug money!
2:51 p.m. First block of Rockefeller Drive. Robbery.
Deputies thought the victim’s story didn’t quite make sense — at least, not his first one.
The 36-year-old man told deputies he’d come to Rockefeller Drive to pay back $20 he’d borrowed from a friend, and that an unknown man guy grabbed a wad of $200 cash from his hands and ran. He said he struggled with the man, who broke free and made it to the wood line.
That was his story. He didn’t stick to it.
When deputies started asking questions, he said that he’d actually come to Rockefeller Drive to buy drugs, and that the money was snatched when he pulled it out.
He then decided not to say anything more, so deputies couldn’t pursue the case.
He declined deputies’ request for a written statement.
June 3
Mouthing off
10:53 a.m. 100 block of Pine Cone Drive. Burglary.
When deputies arrested three suspected thieves after a chase and prepared to show them to witnesses, one of the suspects made things easy for them: “Yep, that’s the woman who was chasing me,” the 18-year-old said as deputies walked him past a woman who’d said she chased a thief from her home.
The three young men — two 18-year-olds and one 19-year-old — broke through a fence on a Pine Cone Drive home, then tried to break through a window, smashing one pane.
A woman inside the house heard the glass break and yelled, “Get out of here!” to the would-be burglars.
The men fled, a neighbor chased them, and witnesses saw one get into a car.
Deputies stopped the car and detained him, then set up a perimeter and caught the other two. Witnesses identified them, and deputies arrested all three.
Aug. 19
Of all the targets to pick …
9:14 p.m. North Old Dixie Highway. Espanola.
A deputy out for a jog near North Old Dixie Highway called 911 reporting he’d just been shot at.
He said he thought a white car with a temporary tag that drove by him several times was involved.
Deputies found a car that matched the description the deputy had called in.
They stopped it, and placed its driver and three passengers, all men ages 18-25, in handcuffs in the back of a patrol car.
The deputies read the men their rights, then interviewed them.
The men said three of them — the fourth man, they said, was picked up just before deputies stopped the car — had gone out to Old Dixie Highway with three shotguns and done some target shooting, aiming at paper targets and bushes.
Two of the shotguns jammed, so they decided to leave. But as they did, they saw a man jogging in the area. They didn’t realize he was a deputy.
They “threw a firecracker out of the window in the direction of (the deputy),” according to the report, and sped off. Deputies found fireworks on the floorboard.
They photographed the car, the shotguns and the fireworks, “determined that no crimes had been committed and that the firework being thrown near (the deputy) was mistaken for a gunshot,” told the men why they’d been detained, and released them from custody.
Sept. 2
Rockin’ it
2:29 p.m. 9600 block of Oceanshore Boulevard, Marineland. Grand larceny.
A woman who lived along Marine Center Drive didn’t think much of it when she saw gray tractors pull in at a local marine park at about 6:30 a.m. and remove large coquina boulders.
They clearly weren’t going very far away — they repeatedly loaded the trucks up, left, and returned 20 or 30 minutes later — and surely, she thought, the drivers must have had the park’s permission.
They didn’t.
The park’s maintenance head told deputies that each of the boulders, depending on its size, was worth $100-$500, and that the thieves had stolen “well over” $10,000 worth of them, according to the report.
The boulders had been in an area confined by a 6-foot-tall chain-link fence, which was unlocked.
A deputy wrote in a report on the case that there are no investigative leads.
Oct. 16
$20,000 worth of child’s play
9:35 a.m. First block of Ulaturn Trail. Criminal mischief.
Lawn maintenance men working at a home that was under renovation by a real estate company for a rental business noticed one day that the sliding glass door to the house was open, and called the realty company.
The home had been flooded, a real estate agent realized when he arrived, by someone who’d “flushed numerous items down the upstairs toilet which caused the toilet to overflow and flood the house,” according to a Sheriff’s Office report.
The damage, he told deputies, could cost as much as $20,000 to repair.
Carpet had to be ripped out, the home’s drywall and ceiling were damaged, and the company had to do mold removal.
The real estate agent told deputies there were two bicycles on the property, and said he spoke to the elementary school-aged brother and sister they belonged to.
The kids told him they had seen two other neighborhood children, both boys, playing inside the house.
A deputy investigating the case wrote in a report that he would contact a school resource deputy to get a list of the children who use the nearby bus stop.
