Christopher Lemke, Who Threatened Neighbors With a Gun on July 4, Avoids Jail Or Felony Conviction

As Leslie (*) described it in a letter to the court, she had just entered the second trimester of her pregnancy last July 4 when she went to her mom’s and stepfather’s house in Palm Coast’s R-Section, with her best friend and goddaughter, to enjoy a blowup pool and the holiday. She often went there. It was her safe place. Her stepbrother and his friends joined them in the evening to celebrate the Fourth, shooting off some fireworks out front.




The first time Christopher Lemke, 70, came out of his house with his firearm, a Walther .22 caliber handgun, he was pointing it downward. He was angry. He didn’t like fireworks going over his house. He told the revelers to move their party down the street. “We respected his wishes and moved up the street,” Leslie wrote. Ten minutes later, Lemke’s wife came out to tell the group that fireworks were scaring her cat. Just as she was talking to them, someone else–not part of that group–set off a very lout rocket, indicating to the Lemkes that the revelers on the street were not to blame.

As Lemke’s wife was walking back to her house, Lemke himself came out again. “It was at this time when things took a huge turn as Chris pointed his laser sight on his gun at me (as I was the closest to him),” Leslie wrote the court, “specifically my lower stomach, and then proceeded to wave it at my step dad and my step brother and his friends.”

Lemke was not dealing with strangers. He’s known Leslie since she was 16, or well over a decade. She’s lived at that house on and off since then. Lemke has known her step-father even longer. He’d been over to her mother’s house countless times, and the two families were neighborly every time they saw each other, and spoke to each other at length.




But not that night, not Lemke. “The laser went lower with each person he pointed it at,” Leslie wrote. “As Chris was pointing the gun he stated, ‘the next one that lights one of those, is getting one of these.’ After he said those words my step dad immediately became enraged and entered ‘dad-mode’ as he jumped in front of me and began yelling at Chris. My step brother [] immediately ran inside to call the police and as I stood [there] frozen with tears running down my eyes, my fiancé grabbed me and got me inside as well.”

Leslie was in disbelief, as she would later tell Lemke’s wife. She stressed in her letter to the court that her step-father “did not threaten to beat Christopher Lemke up until after Chris had pointed the gun and threatened to shoot my stepfather and his family (including myself). Chris did not act in self defense, he was trying to take matters into his own hands and scare us into being quiet.”

Lemke was arrested that night and charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, each a third degree felony with a maximum combined penalty of 10 years in prison. It was Lemke’s first offense, so his sentencing scoresheet placed him outside minimum guidelines for prison time.

Last December he pleaded out. Last Friday, Circuit Judge Terence Perkins sentenced him to four years on probation. The plea had been negotiated between Assistant State Attorney Melissa Clark and Ryan Albaugh, the defense attorney, leaving it to Perkins to decide only whether Lemke would have his adjudication withheld or not–whether he would be branded a felon or not. Perkins withheld adjudication.




But part of the negotiated plea is a civil injunction forbidding Lemke from owning or possessing guns “so long as they are neighbors or living near each other,” Albaugh said. Had Lemke been adjudicated guilty of the felonies, that would have automatically made that particular provision of the injunction unnecessary, as he would have been barred from owning or possessing firearms for the rest of his life. But the injunction has the same effect.

Perkins warned him: “Mr. Lemke, I want to make sure you understand that from the perspective of the criminal case, the big chunky piece here is guns. You’re not in the gun business anymore. You can’t own guns, can’t possess guns, you can’t fire guns, you can’t buy ’em, sell ’em, anything. You can’t have any in your house, you can’t have access to them, none.” If he’s found with a gun, it’s a probation violation, which starts the case “all over again,” Perkins warned.

“The guns were a hobby for me, it was a matter of shooting holes in paper,” Lemke told the judge. (Well, that, and pointing them at people on July 4.) “And it’s not my life. I have other hobbies that I pursue, and there are probably better areas to spend money in anyway.”

“I hope so,” the judge told him.

The injunction also includes a no-contact order that forbids Lemke from having any contact with Leslie or her parents. They live across the street from each other, but he will be barred from approaching them.




Lemke is prohibited from attempting to change the injunction. “It’s going to be a permanent injunction,” Perkins told him. “And it’ll apply to you without the ability to modify it or seek the revocation or withdrawal of this injunction for as long as you are living within the same proximity as you are of your neighbors in that regard.”

Lemke told the judge he wanted “to regain the ability to cook hamburgers in front of the garage on our grill.” Clark objected. “Grill in the backyard,” she said. “I don’t see any reason to potentially cause issues down the road. I just think that’s going to set him up for potential failure down the road.” A probation violation could result in incarceration. Lemke would have also been required to clear his garage enough that he must park inside it. Previously, he and his wife took care of rescued animals in the garage. But Leslie and her father had no objections to him parking in the driveway, since they knew he took care of rescues. The judge had no objections, either.

“The whole idea here is we’re trying to make sure that nothing like what’s alleged happened in this case happens again,” Perkins said, before speaking with Leslie and her father about how to minimize future trouble, “where you can live peaceably enjoying your property in that same general location without this happening again.” So Perkins told Lemke to park his car in the driveway as long as his neighbor wasn’t outside, or even to grill in front of the garage as long as his neighbor wasn’t outside, and so on. “It’s kind of a soft direction in that regard. But that’s what I want to do,” the judge said. He told the lawyers that the negotiated resolution “was just a grain of an idea but you turned it into reality and something I think will work actually better.”

The ban on guns appears to have originated with the way Leslie had described the situation during the incident and since, how had affected her life, and how a subsequent shooting that resulted in the death of someone she knew only amplified her anxieties. “I could not sleep for months and was always crying, thinking of what had happened, and what could have happened,” she wrote. “To think that someone you have known for years and has watched you grow up would threaten yours and your unborn child’s life is incredibly heartbreaking. He has ruined so many relationships within our family and their neighborhood as nobody feels safe. I used to visit my mothers house quite often as it was my comfort place to get away and get a nice family meal. Since the incident, I have visited that house less than a handful of times, as I do not feel safe being anywhere near Christopher Lemke. Not to mention the constant state of anxiety I am in now, wondering if a gun will be pulled on me again.”

Two months after the July 4 incident, her co-worker, 36-year-old Mark Ruschmeier, was shot and killed in the Woodlands by 86-year-old Charles Kidd, a man he and his mother were living with at the time. The case is also before Perkins, who is in the midst of determining whether Kidd is competent to stand trial or not (he is leaning towards not). Kidd had advanced dementia at the time, yet still possessed guns.

“This immediately brought the thoughts that that could have been any one of us that night,” Leslie wrote, before pleading with the court: take away his guns.

The court listed, and Perkins made sure Lemke heard his warning.

(*) The name has been changed.