Flagler Detective Coma Rapidly Cleared of Fleeing Charge After Speeding Incident; Still Faces Ticket and Internal Investigation

The State Attorney’s Office on Monday dropped the charge of fleeing and eluding against Flagler County Sheriff’s Detective Ardit Coma five days after Ormond Beach police arrested him as he was speeding to work on U.S. 1 in his agency-issued car. 

Coma, who was suspended without pay immediately after the arrest, still faces a speeding violation for going 88 in a 55 and an internal affairs investigation that likely will result in some penalties for policy violations, but is in the process of being reinstated and his arrest record sealed, according to his attorney, Aaron Delgado. 

Delgado had immediately filed a motion to dismiss the fleeing and eluding charge, a third-degree felony, and spoken with several officers involved in the arrest to establish that there had been no intent on Coma’s part to flee or elude. He’d been unaware of the lights behind him–he was blaring music as he sped–and was pulling over to offer Ormond Beach police assistance when he saw the deployment of stop sticks. He was not aware that the stop sticks were intended for him, Delgado said. 

The attorney said there were two reasons for the rapid resolution of the case: the clarity of and ready access to the evidence and the need to restore Coma’s income. 

Coma, 28, lives in Ormond Beach. He’d left home for work before 8 a.m. on Dec. 4 on U.S. 1, after allegedly speeding without responding to an Ormond Beach sergeant’s emergency lights. The Ormond officer reported that he followed Coma at high speed for 1.9 miles and directed another officer to set up stop sticks ahead. 

“He really didn’t know what was going on,” Delgado said of Coma. “As more and more reports came out from the various law enforcement officers, the overall picture they painted was, hey, this was just he had no idea we were trying to stop him. The officer that was behind him there,  the one signaling to stop, didn’t have his lights on for very long at the speed they were traveling, literally at the time of day, the angle of the sun.”

Coma, Delgado said, admitted he was speeding “and he was listening to music really loudly, and he was focusing on the day ahead of him, not his rear view mirror. Why he stopped, ultimately, was he saw a police officer trying to put out stop sticks, and he thought, I’ll stop and assist, because I’m a deputy on my way to work. I’ll help. And that’s why he was so shocked when they arrested him. He’s like, What?” 

The officer setting up the stop sticks confirmed that Coma’s behavior was consistent with that of an officer stopping to lend assistance, Delgado said. A supplemental report by the sergeant who made the arrest provided additional information that helped lead to the charges being dropped. 

“I’m not saying that anyone made any mistakes,” Delgado said. “Everyone handled this the right way. No one cut any special slack to him being a police officer. No one said, Oh, well, you’re a police officer. Get out of here. They did what they probably would have done with any citizen. And then the process worked the way it should work for any citizen, which is: there’s an arrest, the powers that be, the State Attorney’s Office, your lawyer, they review the evidence, they talk about it, they gather the facts. And if there’s not a case the state feels like that they should prosecute, whether they can get a successful conviction on it or if the equities don’t justify it, they dismiss the charges.”

The second reason for the rapid resolution, at least for Delgado, was Coma being without pay. Typically after an arrest an employee may be suspended, placed on administrative leave, but with pay, pending the resolution of the case. “Very few people could go two weeks without getting paid, or a week without getting paid,” Delgado said. “I would say the average criminal case probably takes, like, six months to a year to unravel.” 

He pressed the State Attorney’s Office to address the case. “It’s not just because he’s a police officer,” he said. “I commend the State Attorney’s Office for moving so quickly. Many times I’m successful in getting the state to review my clients’ cases quickly, especially when there’s something like this at stake.”

Flagler County Sheriff’s Chief of Staff Mark Strobridge, who oversees internal affairs investigations, said last week that there would be an IA investigation to address Coma’s possible policy violations, immediately following the closing of the criminal case. The investigation will address the speeding. The penalties, Delgado said, could be a demotion or the loss of a privilege, such as taking his agency-issued car home, but nothing more serious. 

Disclosure: Aaron Delgado is FlaglerLive’s attorney and a member of its Board of Directors.