- April 18, 2024
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Two young Palm Coast men were arrested in two separate incidents March 30 after they displayed their firearms, scaring others.
The first incident happened at the Metro Diner in the Island Walk shopping center off Old Kings Road at about 3:18 p.m., according to a Flagler County Sheriff's Office arrest affidavit.
Joseph Eberhardinger, 24 and a resident of Upshire Path in Palm Coast, showed up at the diner with his girlfriend, Cassandra Hoffman, who'd recently been terminated from her job at the diner. She'd come with Eberhardinger to pick up her last check.
Hoffman and the diner's general manager exchanged words: Hoffman had written an email saying she'd like to be rehired if the general manager ever quit or got fired, and the general manager had written back and "stated, 'Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere,'" according to the report.
Eberhardinger didn't like that, and told the general manager, "That's very unprofessional, that sounded like a personal attack and I'm going to report you to the Better Business Bureau," according to the report.
Eberhardinger and Hoffman walked back to Eberhardinger's Toyota Tacoma, and three witnesses saw him open the rear truck door and remove a black assault rifle and cock it multiple times. Someone called the police.
Sheriff's Office deputies arrived to find Eberhardinger and Hoffman still on the scene, and Eberhardinger standing next to the truck. They handcuffed Eberhardinger.
Eberhardinger told a deputy that he had not intended to display the gun, and that he had the firearm bystanders had seen — and three or four others, or more, he told a deputy — was in the car because he and Hoffman had gone shooting at a range in Ocala earlier in the day.
He said that after leaving the diner, he'd started the truck and then smelled an odd odor and stopped, still in the parking lot, to find out what it was. When he moved the rifles to look under the rear seat, he told a deputy, one of the guns — a Century Arms AK-47 — fell out and he grabbed it and put it back.
He later said he'd stopped again to look for his phone in the back seat, and that that's what he was doing when deputies showed up. He also told the deputy that he and Hoffman actually hadn't gone to the gun range that day, but the day before.
Deputies didn't buy his story. "Mr. Eberhardinger's description of events did not logically make sense," a deputy wrote in the arrest report. "That after being in a verbal altercation with the Metro Diner General Manager, he should remove guns from his vehicle in order to attempt to locate an odd odor that he just all of a sudden started to smell."
The deputy asked Eberhardinger about his cocking the rifle, and Eberhardinger said he'd only removed the magazine. But a witness described Eberhardinger "making the motion of charging a side charging handle."
Deputies took the AK-47 into evidence, and removed three other rifles and two pistols from the truck and are holding them for safe keeping.
Employees and diner patrons "were in fear for their life at the moment when Mr. Eberhardinger removed the firearm form the rear of his truck," the deputy wrote in the report.
Deputies arrested Eberhardinger for improper exhibition of a firearm. He'd been released on $1,000 bond by March 31.
In the second case, a 15-year-old boy was swimming with his friends in a lake on the east side of Belle Terre Boulevard north of Zonal Geranium Trail when a car pulled up with four young men in it, according to a Sheriff's Office report.
One of the young men in the car was 19-year-old Burgess Place, Palm Coast resident Anthony Catoggio.
Catoggio and the other young men from the car began to swim with the 15-year-old and his friends when the Catoggio and the guys from the car "began to fool around with them," according to the report.
The 15-year-old thought Catoggio "seemed to attack him verbally and physically," but he thought Cataggio "was playing with him, so he did not think much of it," according to the report.
But then, the 15-year-old later told deputies, Catoggio said, "Are you guys done?" The 15-year-old asked him what he meant, and Catoggio "told them he would show them what he means," then went to his truck and grabbed a gun from it.
The 15-year-old's friends screamed when they saw the gun, and the 15-year-old and the others swam away.
When the 15-year-old turned around, he saw Catoggio put the gun away.
A deputy showed up at about 6:52 p.m. and spoke to Catoggio, who said the group of youths who were playing in the lake when he arrived kicked sand at him and his friends, and "he got upset," according to the report.
Catoggio told the deputy he went to his truck and pulled out a Remington 597 .22-caliber semi-automatic rifle and put it on the car's hood, and asked his friends if they thought he'd get in trouble if if he began to shoot it into the water.
Catoggio "further said he was going to shoot the rifle in the same water that (the 15-year-old) and his friends were still in. He said he wasn’t going to shoot towards them. He was going to shoot towards the southern end of the lake," the deputy wrote in the report.
Four other teens — two other 15-year-olds, a 13-year-old and a 16-year-old — corroborated the 15-year-old boy's story to the deputy.
The deputy arrested Catoggio on a charge of improper exhibition of a firearm. He'd been released from jail on $500 bond as of March 31.
