Justin Andrew Fountain, a 31-year-old resident of Bren Mar Lane in Palm Coast, was arrested on five felonies and held without bond at the Flagler County jail after allegedly stalking an ex-girlfriend at her Palm Coast motel, at her workplace and at a local restaurant, tracking her electronically, disseminating fabricated messages to her friends and family, and threatening to destroy her most prized memorial from the recent death of her son.
The State Attorney’s Office has filed a motion asking the court to deny Fountain bond through all pre-trial proceedings.
After moving from Virginia, Emily (the name is a pseudonym) was staying at the Red Roof Inn on Old Kings Road in Palm Coast. One of her possessions is a plush memorial bear that contains an urn of the ashes of the child Emily lost in childbirth last spring.
Emily, 24, had met Fountain on a dating app a few weeks ago and started dating him casually. It went well for three weeks. But Fountain then started to get aggressively controlling.
After finding pipes and discovering he’d used cocaine while in the room, Emily told him they were done. She asked him to return her room key and to stop contacting her.
Fountain started texting and calling her at her workplace, then showing up there–an assisted living facility–without warning or invitation. Returning to her motel room, she saw his car in the parking lot. She called a friend to pick her up so they could have dinner at Culver’s on State Road 100. Fountain followed her there and attempted to talk to her, making a scene and talking “nonsense.”
Emily and her friend then went to Flagler Beach, where she got alerted that someone had signed into her social media accounts. Whoever had done so was in the area of the Red Roof Inn, and was doing so from an iPhone 16.
She’d never given Fountain access, but she immediately knew it was him. Fountain was now telling her by text that “he could see her location and that he knew exactly where she was,” according to his arrest report, and “to stop ignoring him, or she would regret it.” Emily went to the Flagler Beach Police Department to report the issue. The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office was then contacted since the issue began in Palm Coast.
“Since you wanted to call the police, I just let them know that you had warrants out of Virgina and what room number and where you were at so enjoy your trip back to Virginia,” Fountain texted her, adding: “Police just called me back. They’re on their way to get you.” The Sheriff’s Office documented no such communications between the Sheriff’s Office and Fountain.
Fountain told her he had her bear, the bear containing her son’s ashes. If she continued to ignore him, he told her, he would burn the bear and post her private SnapChat messages to Facebook and send them to her mother. “If you want your son back, tell Buddy to leave now,” he texted in apparent reference to the friend Emily was with. “Five seconds and I’m gonna set this teddy bear on fire.”
He also had taken her insulin, which she needed that night.
He disseminated numerous private pictures of hers he’d taken from her device and sent messages to her friends. “You need to answer my calls if you know what’s good,” he texted. “I’m going to destroy you.”
When she returned to the motel, she found the door open, the room in disarray, and personal property missing.
As Emily spoke to a sheriff’s deputy, Fountain continued to call and text, accumulating some 60 phone calls from different numbers and 50 texts. Emily’s phone got alerts that she was being tracked. When she attempted to change her passwords, she discovered he had reported her phone stolen, which prevented her from regaining full control of her accounts.
As deputies began tracking Fountain through license plate readers, he sent screen shots to Emily showing his own GPS that indicated he was driving north. That enabled deputies to locate Fountain on Palm Coast Parkway, heading toward the I-95 interchange. One of the messages Fountain texted stated, in reference to the bear: “I’ll throw it out the window going down the road.”
He was pulled over on I-95, near the Matanzas Woods Parkway interchange. The traffic stop was executed as a high-risk traffic stop.
Deputies quickly found the stolen bear.
Fountain was charged with aggravated stalking, extortion, tampering with a victim, theft, illegally tracking a person with an unauthorized device and illegally accessing a computer device–five felonies and a misdemeanor. One of the felonies is second degree, the others are third-degree. Fountain’s roof color has switched from red to green.
“I commend the victim for coming forward despite this stalker’s threats,” Sheriff Rick Staly said. “Be extremely careful who you give access to [in] your life. Your cell phone, laptop and residence hold banking info, social media accounts, and cherished memories.” He said jealous and cruel men like Fountain “will use anything to control their victims including extorting them with their most personal and emotional memories.”
If you or a person you know is a victim of domestic or sexual violence or abuse, contact the Family Life Center in Flagler County, confidentially, at 386-437-3505 or go its website.
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