Bunnell Police Conducting Death Investigation in Shooting of Man in Duplex on S. Bacher Street

Cpl. Shane Groth said police were called to the scene at 2:14 p.m. “It came in as a shooting,” Groth said. Police arrived at the scene at 2:15. The victim was already dead.

“We’re interviewing a couple of subjects,” Groth, a seven-year veteran of the agency, said. “They were on scene when it happened.”

“They’re very cooperative,” Foster said.

The shooting took place inside a duplex at the southwest corner of South Bacher and East Court Street. In the house next door this afternoon, as authorities were awaiting the arrival of the medical examiner, adults and younger people hung out on the porch, talked and played as if it were any other Wednesday afternoon. The segment of road in front of the duplex was cordoned off, but what little traffic there was, was not otherwise impeded.

The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office was assisting with its Crime Scene Investigation unit, which had been at the scene earlier in the afternoon and was due to return after the arrival of the medical examiner, who’d not yet been there at 5 p.m.: the examiner had had a busy day in Flagler, having responded to an apparent suicide on County Road 13 earlier in the day. Bunnell’s officers were still working that incident when the call came in from South Bacher.

“My detective is working with their detective, helping them,” Staly said. Bunnell’s relatively new detective, Kyle Totten, has faced two such death investigations (not counting the suicide) in a matter of weeks. Three weeks ago he was investigating the death of a homeless man, Robert Thomas Cronin Jr., outside the Bunnell branch library. That investigation is wrapping up, Foster said today at the scene.

“There’s no danger to the community whatsoever,” Foster said of today’s incident. “I think it’ll be resolved pretty quickly.” He said the scene had not been disturbed, pending the arrival of the medical examiner. Groth said that he could not say–he did not yet know–if the incident entailed more than one gunshot. “We work every death investigation as a homicide until we rule otherwise,” Groth said.

Detectives would likely have to work on search warrants Foster said.

The victim’s identity, of course, could not be released as next-of-kin identification had not been made. But Foster said the occupants of the duplex had moved in just last month.