A Lockdown in Putnam Ripples to Anger in Palm Coast and a Man’s Arrest in Shooting

Gregory Joseph Marr was angry. There’d been a shooting at his wife’s health care facility Tuesday. He couldn’t reach her for a while. But his anger, by day’s end, had landed him at the Flagler County jail after he fired a gun several times into the canal at his Chelsea Court home in Palm Coast and appeared to threaten a neighbor. The shooting required Flagler County sheriff’s deputies to set up a perimeter around the house until Marr surrendered Tuesday afternoon.

Earlier that day Linni Drumm, a 44-year-old mother of four, was shot and killed while she was in her truck at the Putnam County Health Department’s parking lot. She’d taken her daughter to the center for a medical check-up. Police say her companion of 13 years, Jose Antonio Maldonado, had followed her and allegedly shot her before panicking and fleeing. Police later arrested him. He faces a first-degree murder charge.

The shooting triggered a lockdown at the Putnam Health Department. Marr’s 56-year-old wife later told Flagler sheriff’s deputies that she works at the healthcare facility that went on lockdown, and that her husband became upset about not being able to contact her for several hours, as no one within the health department–in an odd development in such situations–was allowed to make or take calls during the lockdown.

When Marr’s wife got home, she heard gunshots in the rear of the three-bedroom house, which the Marrs bought just last December. She then saw her husband shooting her .38 Smith and Wesson revolver at something in the back yard, according to an incident report. She asked him what he was doing. He told her he was “testing out the gun making sure that it was working properly and that he wanted her to take a few shots so that she can start taking the gun to work in [] case of a shooting to protect herself,” the report states.

When she told him it was not proper to shoot the gun in the backyard (state law forbids it) he said he was just shooting at a log across the canal.

That’s not how a neighbor who called 911 saw it. While that neighbor was in her kitchen, she heard shots sound out of the back window of her waterfront home and saw Marr “shooting a handgun outside and waving it around randomly and spinning it between shots,” according to her account to deputies. “She saw [Marr] point the gun in his wife’s direction and took photographs of it.” The photographs allegedly confirmed to deputies that Marr had pointed the gun at his wife. (Other neighbors also spoke to deputies about the gunshots.)

Meanwhile, after Marr had fired into the water, he got into an argument with his wife over firing the weapon. She hid ammunition from him and asked him to give her the gun. He complied, only to then start yelling and telling her to give him back the gun as he was sitting at the kitchen table. “When she declined, he pushed the table toward her direction in a rage,” the incident report states. He did not strike her.

It was around that time that deputies arrived at the house at 9 Chelsea Court and immediately set up a perimeter. Deputies reported hearing a verbal altercation coming from within, but couldn’t see anyone through the windows. They saw Marr come out of the back door a few times without a weapon, then go back inside. “Eventually, announcements were made via PA and [Marr] exited out of the front door and complied

Marr would later admit to a deputy that he’d drank several beers.

He was handcuffed and placed in the rear of a patrol car as deputies began their investigation.

“Upon viewing the photos provided” by the neighbor, a deputy reported, “it appeared that [Marr] did have the gun pointed in [his wife’s]
direction with disregard to her safety.” His wife assured deputies that he’d never made any threates with the gun but was nevertheless “being very careless due to his alcohol consumption,” according to the report. Deputies concluded he’d fired six rounds.

Marr was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a felony, and improper exhibition of a firearm or a weapon.