Flagler Beach’s Kimberly Chewning, 53, Arrested for Allegedly Attacking Cops and Smashing Neighbor’s Window

Kimberly Chewning, a 53-year-old resident of South 2nd Street in Flagler Beach, was booked at the Flagler County jail Sunday morning on felony charges of battering and threatening law enforcement officers following an unexplained and alleged burglary–later reclassified as criminal mischief–in her next-door apartment.

The Flagler Beach Police Department and the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office responded to the apartments at close to 2 a.m. Sunday after a report of a burglary at apartment #328. Chewning lives at Apartment #324.




A front window to apartment 328 had been shattered. The window screen was on the ground amid shards of glass. A blood trail led from the window to the door of apartment 324, according to one of Chewning’s arrest report. Officers determined that no one had gained access to the interior of the apartment, where the lights were off and no one responded when called.

When law enforcement officers reviewed security footage, they saw that at 1:37 to 1:38 a.m., a woman exited apartment 324–Chewning’s apartment–to walk her dog. The woman is seen in the street with her dog for a minute before she reenters #324. Four minutes later, a “subject is seen exiting apartment 324,” the arrest report states, without identifying the subject by name or sex. The subject moves toward apartment 324 and goes out of view of the camera. “The subject returns to apartment 324, enters and shuts the door” before other residents begin to appear on the second floor in likely reaction to the audible commotion below.

Officers at that point suspected that Chewning may have been more involved in the incident than she’d let on when they’d first interviewed her, and that she could be harboring an injured person. She allowed them into her apartment. Officers noticed “small splotches of blood and shards of glass” in the hallway, leading to the bedrooms. “At this point, law enforcement believed that an additional injured subject was hiding in the residence,” the report states.




She told officers that she’d heard people talking moments before she heard the unmistakable sound of glass breaking, and that it may have involved two people, though she couldn’t determine their age or sex or race. She also told officers that her own outdoor furniture–a coffee table and two chairs–was stolen.

Chewning became apprehensive and would not readily listen to officers’ requests to open bedroom doors and secure several barking and snarling dogs, but eventually did so. A juvenile came out of the room and joined another juvenile–Chewning’s grandchildren–who had been sleeping on the couch. No one else was located. But officers found a bloody sock near the entrance to one of the rooms, and bloody clothes on a hamper behind a bedroom door. At that point officers let Chewning know that they would be securing a search warrant.

Chewning became irate. After officers asked her to sit down and not make a scene in front of her grandchildren, she “attempted to pen the door to the apartment and pushed Corporal Barkoskie in an attempt to remove him from the home,” her arrest report states. It took four law enforcement officers to bring Chewning under control after she allegedly continued to push and grab the corporal. When officers tried to walk her to a patrol car, Chewning turned herself into dead weigh. Attempts to contact the children’s father were unsuccessful. The children’s other grandmother responded and took care of them.




Chewning “again became combative and used several derogatory racial and sexual slurs,” the report states, allegedly resisting officers’ and deputies’ attempts to search her, then violently kicking as they attempted to put her in the car.

In Barkoskie’s patrol car on the way to the jail for booking, Chewning allegedly threatened to choke the corporal and kicked and punched the compartment around her, but causing no damage. At the jail, she was tased “due to her level of resistance with Corrections Deputies,” the report states. It isn’t clear whether she was tased while still in restraints.

According to a Flagler Beach police arrest affidavit, the consensus among officers and deputies was this: “Chewning in a fit of unprovoked anger (as she had repeatedly demonstrated on the scene with officers), removed the screen belonging to apartment 328 and smashed the window, possibly to gain access into the unoccupied dwelling which was later learned that new occupants rented a day prior. Chewning previously remarked that one of them sat in one of the chairs outside her apartment without her permission while he smoked a cigarette. However, this act of criminal mischief caused such injury to Chewning that she abandoned her efforts to gain access and returned home to render first aid on herself.

Chewning faces two third-degree felony charges–battery on a law enforcement officer and resisting arrest with violence–and a misdemeanor charge of criminal mischief.

Flagler Beach police contacted the apartment management, Tavolacci Rentals, whose property manager completed the paperwork to prosecute the criminal mischief case, citing a repair and replacement value of $500. The manager told police that she would be initiating eviction proceedings for Chewning.