Three Hurt in 3 Bizarre Shootings in 32 Hours in Palm Coast and Bunnell This Weekend

Three unrelated shootings, once of them authorities described as an attempted murder, left three people injured and involved three police agencies, including in one case the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, though no arrests have been made.

The shooting the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office described as an attempted murder took place late Friday night outside  Top Notch Bar at 405 South State Street (U.S. 1) near Martin Luther King Boulevard in Bunnell. Several gunshots were heard in the area, prompting the response of Bunnell police and sheriff’s deputies.

The victim, 20-year-old Octavia Davis of Kathleen Trail in Palm Coast, told deputies that she’d been shot “several times and pointed to several alleged gunshot wounds on her left leg,” according to a sheriff’s incident report, and told deputies that the suspects, whose names were redacted from the report, had fled into the Top Notch bar. A police perimeter was established around the bar, with a crowd growing outside of it. This was taking place just after 10 p.m. Davis was with another woman, 21-year-old Victoria Dove, who lives at the same address as Davis.

“I remained at the front of the club with Davis and Dove due to them and multiple other subjects becoming verbally aggressive towards
each other,” the reporting deputy wrote. “Upon the arrival of additional units, the verbal alteration was de-escalated and entry was
made into the club, at which time the suspects were verified to not be within.” FDLE subsequently arrived at the scene.

Monday morning, Bunnell Police Chief Tom Foster summarized the incident in a statement: “Upon the officer’s arrival, the suspected shooter had fled the area,” Foster said.  Witnesses told police “they observed an individual shooting into the ground.  A victim received minor injuries from possibly asphalt fragments.” The victim was treated and released at Florida Hospital Flagler.

Foster said the incident was the culmination of a domestic dispute that had started earlier that evening at Riverside apartments, where the suspect is alleged to have choked and hit his girlfriend. But attempts to locate the suspects were fruitless.  “The Florida Department of Law Enforcement responded and processed the crime scene, due to the Sheriff’s Office Crime Scene Tech processing another crime scene in the county,” Foster said, noting that charges are pending.

The scene that had kept the sheriff’s crime scene investigator busy was the result of a strange incident–a shooting–earlier that afternoon at 19 Burning Wick Place in Palm Coast, an address that would keep deputies busy through Sunday.

It started Friday afternoon around 3 when deputy George Deputy Hristakopoulos responded to the 19 Burning Wick Place address about a reported shooting. There, he found Dylan Alves, 18, a resident of 191 Arena Lake Drive in Palm Coast, sitting on a chair and bleeding substantially from his right leg, where the deputy observed a hole about five inches above the knee. The front porch was covered in blood. Blood lead into the house and on the front door. Two small dogs and a cat were wandering about the crime scene. A third dog was confined behind a picket fence. Susan Paulsen,  46, a resident at the Burning Wick Place address, was tending to Alves’s injury.

Paulsen told the deputy that Alves had “found a gun” and accidentally shot himself while in the presence of Keith Pereira, 20, while in the garage. Pereira lives at the same address, where the garage is set up as an apartment independent from the house. Flagler County Fire Rescue took Alves to Halifax hospital in Daytona Beach. Another deputy went to the hospital to interview Alves.

Deputy Hristakopoulos then sought to take possession of the firearm, only to be told that Lauren Paulsen, an 18-year-old resident at the same address, was driving with Pereira to the sheriff’s office to turn in the firearm. That turned out not to be the case: Paulsen had driven Pereira to Papa Johns, the pizza parlor. “The firearm in question remained within the vehicle, inside a plastic bag,” the deputy reported. It was later determined that the gun had been reported stolen. Hristakopoulos then established the house as a crime scene, which did not sit well with the older Paulsen at the scene, who at first resisted leaving the perimeter of the crime scene. She then complied, but told Lauren Paulsen not to speak with the cops. The case, Hristakopoulos  concluded, is “an active investigation, and it is undetermined what crimes have been committed at this time.”

Late Sunday afternoon, the same Burning Wick Place house was again the scene of violence requiring deputies’ response. The 911 caller reported that there were some 20 people behind the house, fighting. When cops arrived, several people fled, several were stopped and told police that two men had agreed to fight, while the rest came to watch.

The 17-year-old son of Susan Paulsen, a resident at the house, told police that people had come to watch another 17-year-old boy fight with someone known only as “Sweet Pea.” He state that the fight was over a girl and that the physical altercation was only between the two males that agreed to fight. The deputy spoke with one of the boys who was to  fight, who confirmed the story, and that a large group of people had accompanied “Sweet Pea” when he came over for the fight. “We were unable to locate ‘Sweet Pea’ and the other subjects who fled the scene on foot,” the incident report concluded.

The third shooting took place late Saturday night, this time outside of the Flagler Bar at 111 N. State Street. That one was reported as a self-inflicted gunshot wound–from a retired law enforcement officer, William Petrofsky, 47. It is illegal to carry a firearm into a bar. Foster said charges may be filed against Petrofksy, who is a security director at St. Johns Town Center, according to his LinkedIn profile.

“Contact was made with the individual who advised the officers that while he was walking outside in the parking lot of the bar, he reached into his pocket to retrieve his keys where he also carried his handgun,” Foster, the Bunnell police chief, said in a statement. “The individual is a confirmed out of state retired law enforcement officer and current holder of a Florida concealed weapon permit.”

Petrofsky was charged with domestic battery in 2012, when a Bunnell police officer drew his gun on Petrofsky after receiving reports that a woman–later identified as Petrofsky’s wife–had been dragged by her hair into a car by Petrofsky. The woman feel out of the car and to her knees after the car had been pulled over and Petrofsky had walked around the rear of the car, not listening to the cop’s orders, compelling the cop to draw his weapon. Only then Petrofsky complied. He completed a deferred prosecution agreement and the charges were dropped.

In 2007, when he was assigned to the 81st Precinct in Brooklyn, he was arrested on 19 misdemeanor counts of petit larceny, possession of stolen property and endangering the welfare of a child. The larceny charges stemmed from an allegedly inappropriate use of someone else’s credit card. “While Petrofsky was being questioned about the theft by officers from the North Shore’s 120th Precinct,” the Staten Island Advance reported that December, “he allegedly left his two daughters, ages 10 and 17, unaccompanied in his car with a loaded handgun, which did not have its safety mechanism engaged.” His wife disputed the allegations, and said at the time that her husband, who’d been on terminal disability, was weeks from retirement.

Reports on both Bunnell shooting incidents have been requested. The Bunnell Police Department has not released them yet.