“I’m going to smash your face with my teeth.”
“Look at me. I’m going to fucking kill you. I’m going to murder you. Look who the fuck I am. I’m the fucking devil.”
“385 billion years, and that’s how long I’m going to torture you. You are going to be under torture.”
Those are some of the threats 55-year-old Robert Shawn Detherow was yelling at Flagler County Sheriff’s deputy Necole Marsan Wednesday afternoon as she was taking him to the Flagler County jail after a six-hour standoff with authorities at his home. He also told her he would rape her, rip her limbs off, and called her misogynistic names
Not long before, when he’d finally come out of his house either to surrender or to provoke deputies into shooting him–in a video he’d posted four days ago he’d alluded to wishes that he wanted cops to shoot him–he charged at sheriff’s deputy Cameron Punsky and had to be wrestled to the ground by other deputies, who’d held their fire throughout what had been a tense six hours.
K.S., a 23-year-old resident of nearby Fenimore Lane, was also in the house and was arrested with Detherow, though only on a misdemeanor resisting arrest charge.
Detherow faces three felony charges, including a second-degree felony count of aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer and a misdemeanor count of exposing his sexual organs, as he did to a deputy during the standoff, with the same hand that had brandished a Bible in numerous YouTube videos as he called himself a truth-teller doing God’s work and taunted Sheriff Rick Staly and deputies to come get him. (“If you’re an American and you’re not here with a bible, you’re wrong.”)
He was angry that deputies had arrested his 22-year-old son Hunter last March after Hunter had been in a fight with two older men, allegedly stabbing one of them. Robert Detherow claims his son’s and his own Fourth Amendment rights were violated at the time of the arrest, and that Hunger was arrested merely for “preaching about Jesus.”
Detherow blames Sheriff Rick Staly. But he also blames America for “going wonky,” not paying its debts, imprisoning too many people, not praying, letting too many people cross the border, arresting Donald Trump, and not responding to his call to gather at a nearby house so everyone could confront Sheriff Rick Staly.
“They’ve arrested a president of the United States, they jailed my kid for preaching about Jesus, and now they’re coming to my house after they’ve already served a search warrant on it, because they got information incorrect and continue to violate the Fourth Amendment,” he says in one of five brief videos he posted four days ago, each in one variation or another of his Marine uniform, standing in front of a fireplace topped by a large-screen TV, each ending with him dramatically walking off stage right.
“So everybody else, just so you’re very clear, that’s what this is,” he tells the camera. “So you’re either going to come with me or you’re going to watch your country die just like the South did the last time. And not just the South. This time it’s all of America, every single bit of it, because if nobody steps up, that means it’s OK to do. That’s right. Just like what you guys let them do to President Trump. It’s OK to do. And all I’m saying is grab a Bible without any bloodshed, because everybody’s right. This place is messed up and it ends to be fixed. Period. So don’t grab a gun. Grab a Bible and show up at 91 Forsythe Lane in Palm Coast Florida, 32137 or watch your country sink to death. That’s it.”
It’s not clear why he pointed to 91 Forsythe–a rental–as opposed to his own property.
His arrest report details what had led to the Wednesday standoff with dozens of sheriff’s units, including the St. Johns County Sheriff’s bomb squad, and how it unfolded.
Music had been playing all night in the area of 94 Forsythe Lane. Strange objects had been placed in the streets, including something under a blanket large enough that neighbors wondered if someone was under there. Two chairs, a candle and other objects were strewn about.
When deputies arrived, R.S. appeared at the door, tipped his hat, then went back inside before Detherow appeared and “became combative” with deputies. He spoke about this being Judgement Day and Staly having to be arrested, not listening to the deputy asking him about the strange objects in the road. As the deputy–Marsan, the same deputy who drove him to the jail–persisted, he became offensive toward her, asking her if she wanted to see his privates, then taking them out of his pants.
A neighbor on a bike passed by and called to Detherow, who came out to speak to him and say something about going to heaven. tell him he was about to go to heaven. Turning to a deputy, he then spat out a racist invective, using the n-word as they continued to tell him they had to remove the items from the road, but didn’t want to discard them. He responded by throwing an empty bottle behind him, shattering it on his driveway.
As a deputy began removing objects from the road, he charged with a half-full bottle of something and threw it in the deputy’s direction. The bottle broke near the swale. The deputy retreated and drew her firearm as Detherow went back inside his house, only to shuttle in and out and yell at gathering deputies outside. They couldn’t understand what he was saying. He was playing loud music. He then began what could only be described as a reckless series of acts, bringing out a speaker blaring the music, charging in the deputies’ direction and retreating, each time provoking what could have been a deadly response. Deputies used non-lethal weaponry in an attempt to neutralize him. It didn;t work, and Detherow went back into his house.
The standoff lengthened. He would not communicate with the crisis negotiation team until shortly after 1 p.m., when he was seized after coming out of his house. It was then that, as he was driven to the jail, he let loose more threats against the deputy.
The sheriff had described him on Wednesday as a “religious fanatic survivalist.” Detherow had claimed in one of the videos that he had no firearms, but had everything else necessary for a siege. That was not true. Seven firearms and ammunition were seized from the home, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
The videos are not overtly violent or threatening and are more puzzling than revealing, their only recurring themes being the need for a prayer gathering near his house and the need to confront Staly. In one video, Detherow told Muslims and Jews to show up too, because “you’re not going to get out of this.” Meaning that they should join the praying, too. “And slavery wasn’t that bad compared to what you guys do to those people in those prisons. I would rather be seven years a slave, or eighty years a slave, I don’t care, than put one day in one of those prisons, and that’s probably where you’re going to send me, right? Because I asked everybody to show up at my house with a King James bible.”
He spoke about prison sentences having to be capped at seven years except for child murderers and the like, and debts written off after 35 years. He spoke about the national debt ruining the country, making it all “wonky”–unless the country prayed for two years. But “there’s not going to be Starbucks. There’s not going to be Publix. There’s not going to be a food train. There’s not going to be anything because we’ve already let a million people into our country and it’s not secure. Biblically, our borders should be secured. In fact it’s the death penalty from god if you move a boundary marker. Yeah.” (It isn’t.)
After he spoke of his “one big mess up” in his six years in the Marines (something about Marines doing laundry during the day, against regulations; he was not talking metaphorically), he was upset that his videos had not gone viral, “because nobody cares that America is dying. And all you got to do is show up to 91 Forsythe Lane in Palm Coast, Florida, with a bible, and we’re going to go down and talk to Rick Staly and find out why he violates the Constitution of the United States of America. That’s all I want to do. But nobody wants to join me. So we’ve got three days, and I’m going to make sure that I post everything tonight and I’m just going to wait, and I’m not opening up the door until the third day.”
He invited his friends to come to his property and post a tent, and those not his friends to “stage” in their car. “So good luck. Either 91 Forsythe Lane in Palm Coast Florida or there’s going to be a civil war someplace else because no one is going to go to their bibles.”
