Michael Gambino, a 51-year-old resident of Hibiscus Street in Daytona North, faces two felony child abuse counts and a battery count after his family accused him of intentionally driving recklessly as he towed the RV in which his wife and her two children were huddling. His wife called police from the RV while Gambino was still driving.
The family has been living as a unit in the RV on Gambino’s mother’s property in the Mondex for the past six weeks. The incident had started initially as an argument between Gambino and his wife as the two battled over their phones. His wife had snatched his phone away after she accused him of snatching hers.
On Tuesday morning, Gambino asked his wife and her two children to get out of the RV camper so he could take it to Bull Creek Fish Camp to empty its septic tank, as he routinely does. He told Flagler County Sheriff’s deputies that the three refused to leave the camper. So he attached the RV to his pickup truck and drove the 2.2 mile distance to the fish camp, with the family still in the RV. He told deputies that it wasn’t the first time he’d towed the RV while it was occupied. He said he took a sharper turn than he intended only at the tail end of the trip, when he was turning back into the driveway on Hibiscus.
The family members told a different account. His wife told deputies that arguments had continued Tuesday morning, though it’s not clear why they had remained in the RV. At the fish camp, she said they remained in it because they didn’t want to be abandoned there, with no way of getting home. On the way back, Gambino “began to drive in an aggressive manner causing objects to fall inside the camper,” the arrest report states. One of the children was struck in the leg by multiple objects falling, causing bruising.
Gambino’s wife was “visibly distraught” when she spoke with deputies, telling them that he had previously threatened to kill her or her children, and had access to a sawed off shotgun (which deputies could not locate). The children–a brother and sister–told deputies of the argument they witnessed between Gambino and his wife overnight, with one of th children at one point getting between the parents in an attempt to separate them. The sister told deputies she was in fear on the drive back from the fish camp, while the boy said he’d been hurt by the objects falling.
The interior of the RV was in “complete disarray,” a deputy reported.
Gambino faces two third–degree felony charges and a first degree misdemeanor charge. He was booked at the Flagler County jail on $6,000 bond. He remained at the county jail this afternoon. A judge has signed a no-contact order that would prevent Gambino from having contact with the rest of the family pending a change in the order or the disposition of the case.
