- April 26, 2024
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A man with a bandanna wrapped around his face and a steel pipe in his hand burst into the Sunoco on the west side of U.S.1 near its intersection with State Road 100 early the morning of July 13, swinging the pipe around while screaming “I hate America," according to a police report.
Sunoco clerk Lee Molkentin, who’d walked up to the counter when he heard someone walk into the store and yell “Hey,” later told Sheriff’s Office deputies that when the man began yelling “I hate America” and swinging the pipe at him, he feared for his life and ran behind the counter to push a panic alarm.
After he did, “the male began hitting the metal pole against the counter,” according to a summary of the Molkentin's statement in a police report, and “broke the cash register display and attempted to break the credit card machine,” causing hundreds of dollars worth of damage.
Molkentin reached for the phone to call for help, and the man left and walked north on U.S.1, where he was stopped by law enforcement officers investigating another crime: A man wearing a bandana around his face, another caller had said, had attacked one of his employees’ vehicles as the employee drove by him at nearby Deen Road and North Railroad Street.
That caller said he thought the man was holding a gun, and when Flagler County Sheriff's Office deputies and Bunnell police officers dispatched at around 5:32 a.m. saw a man matching the caller's description walking north near the intersection with State Road 100 West, they shouted at him to stop.
He dropped something from his hand, and took off running, according to the report, while two deputies chased him on foot. A Bunnell Police Department officer arrived on scene in a cruiser and pulled in front of the man, who stopped running and put his hands in the air, but continued walking. When he still refused commands to stop, the policeman pulled his Taser and used it, according to the report, striking the man in the middle of the back.
Law enforcement officers arrested the man — who they identified as Fred Demesmin, a 21-year-old Bunnell resident — while Flagler County Fire Rescue personnel pulled the Taser probes from his back and Demesmin “screamed several unknown statements about loving Haiti and hating America,” according to the report.
The police officer who’d fired the Taser searched Demesmin and found a kitchen knife with a six-inch blade in his back left pocket.
While officers placed Demesmin in a patrol car, a call came in from Molkentin, who’d watched the arrest form down the street and told a dispatcher that the man deputies were arresting had smashed his cash register.
Demesmin’s girlfriend, who’d also watched the arrest, told deputies that Demesmin hadn’t slept much in several days and that he’d been acting strangely.
That day, she told a deputy, he'd “made several statements that demons were after him and that he needed to go out and kill someone.” When he left the house, she followed, but didn’t call police because she was afraid they would harm him. She “became uncooperative” with law enforcement officers and refused to complete a witness statement, according to the report. The man whose employee’s car was attacked said he didn’t want to press charges. The car was not damaged.
Deputies charged Demesmin with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, criminal mischief and resisting arrest without violence. After dispatchers checked criminal databases for information on Demesmin to see if he had a concealed weapons permit —he did not — they added an additional charge of carrying a concealed weapon, for the knife in his back pocket. He remained incarcerated as of the afternoon of Tuesday, July 14, according to Flagler County jail records.
Demesmin had one prior arrest in Flagler County, from September 2012 on charges of having an open house party and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, according to jail records.
