Christian Michael Smith, a 25-year-old resident of Quarter Horse Lane in Bunnell, faces two felonies, including one punishable by life in prison, on accusations that he briefly, falsely imprisoned and assaulted the mother of his child, then drove to the Palm Coast home of the same woman’s ex, with whom she also has a child, broke in, and assaulted him there.
A burglary involving a battery or an assault is punishable by up to life in prison.
Both incidents took place Saturday night. According to his arrest report, Smith admitted to Flagler County Sheriff’s deputies that he purposely sought out the man with whom he says he shares a “baby mama,” to make good on a six or seven-month-old promise to beat him up.
Back then the two men were at the gas station on Pine Lakes Parkway when they got into an altercation. The other man–who will be referred to here as John, though that’s not his actual name–allegedly threatened to assault Smith. Smith told John that if he ever saw him again, he’d beat him up. Smith said he didn’t want to do so at the gas station because Smith’s girlfriend was present, and he didn’t want to fight in front of her. But now the time had come.
It was never made clear what led to the initial altercation. The night of April 20, Smith drove to John’s house and rang the doorbell. John wasn’t expecting anyone. He cracked the door open. Smith allegedly forced his way in and started striking John repeatedly inside his own home, at one point pushing him against a wall and pummeling him with open and closed fists. He only stopped when John’s sister, who’d driven up and seen a vehicle she did not recognize idling by the driveway, with its lights on, that she ran in through the garage and was able to separate the men.
She was pushing Smith out of the house, she told authorities, when he began to fight and push her. John armed himself with a kitchen knife, but by then Smith was outside, where he remained until law enforcement’s arrival. His victims told police he had been smelling of alcohol.
Smith, according to his arrest report, admitted to grabbing john by the throat “and throwing him several times against the front door of the residence as well as multiple times within the garage area,” and that he specifically went to John’s house to fight him. (He had been charged and sentenced on a count of burglary in Pasco County in 2017, where he served five months in jail.)
While Smith was speaking with deputies after that incident, the woman involved in the earlier incident contacted law enforcement to report that Smith had gone to her house, where he has access and entered through the garage. She said he’d been drinking and told him she’d be leaving he house with her two children.
“You’re not going anywhere,” she said he told her before allegedly grabbing her by the neck, though he eventually left–apparently to go to the other house where he had intended to confront John.
Smith remains at the Flagler County jail. He was given a $10,500 bond on five charges, but no bond on the burglary with a battery.
