- April 19, 2024
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A 50-year-old Palm Coast man stabbed a younger man Aug. 12 after an argument that began at the Cracker Ranch and continued by phone, and then to a confrontation outside the older man's home on Kaywood Place, according to the Flagler County Sheriff's Office.
The victim, 25-year-old Bunnell resident Jarret Register, was taken to Halifax Health Medical Center in Daytona Beach with a stab wound in his side.
The man who the Sheriff's Office said stabbed him, Harold 'Doug' Cook, told a detective that there two had argued earlier that day at Cracker Ranch, and "threw hands" with each other in a fistfight. After they'd both left, Cook said, Register began "blowing up (Cook's) phone" threatening to kill his family.
Then, according to Cook, Register showed up in front of the house and attacked Cook, and got him in a choke hold. Cook said he went for his knife — a locking black folder pocketknife with a 4-5-inch blade —and stabbed Register when he felt himself about to pass out.
"Mr. Cook stated that when he started to reach for his knife, Mr. Register told him not to stab him, but he felt that he had to," the detective wrote in Cook's arrest affidavit. Cook then threw the knife somewhere in the garage.
Another 19-year-old witness who lived in the same home said he'd heard Cook threaten Register over the phone with violence that would "lead p---sing out of a bag." That witness tried to physically break up the fight before the stabbing and saw it happen. The fighting took place in a median in front of the home.
The 19-year-old said he was trying to separate the men when Cook stabbed Register in the side, and that Cook tried to stab Register a second time after the two had been separated.
The detective wrote in the arrest report that there was probable cause to believe that Cook had wanted Register to come to the house, that Register had not entered Cook's property and that the fighting was mutual until Cook stabbed Register with a pocketknife.
Had the witness not intervened, the detective wrote, there was probable cause to believe that Cook would have stabbed Register again.
Cook is charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.
