Thrill-Seeking P-Section Prowler, 29, Arrested on Aggravated Stalking Charge After Peering Into Girl’s Bedroom

Damon Smith, a 29-year-old resident of a Pine Haven Drive duplex in Palm Coast, was wearing a purple shirt with the famous tag line from the movie “Halloween” at the time of his arrest for aggravated stalking and voyeurism Saturday night: “Everyone is entitled to one god scare.”

When he was an 11th grader at Flagler Palm Coast High School, he was arrested for phoning in a bomb threat at the school days after being suspended. He was sentenced to two years on probation.




Smith is now accused of stalking the house of a P-Section couple and peering into the window of the couple’s 14-year-old daughter. The girl’s father allegedly caught Smith doing exactly that Saturday and whacked him with a baseball bat, setting off a chase in the neighborhood before losing sight of Smith. Flagler County Sheriff”s deputies later located Smith, who, according to his arrest report, confessed to the incident.

R.B. and his wife had detected the alleged stalking the night before when they were sitting in the lanai in the evening, enjoying a drink. Their cat suddenly perked up. When R.B.’s wife looked behind her husband, she saw the silhouette of a person staring straight at them. R.B.’s wife shouted, and R.B. turned around to glimpse the man long enough to note that he was wearing white shoes before he disappeared in the shadows. The couple reported the incident to the Sheriff’s Office.

The next evening R.B. decided to be on the lookout. He grabbed a beer and a baseball bat and sat in a dark area of his backyard around 8 p.m.. It was about half an hour after sunset. Sure enough, there was the silhouette again. Same white shoes. The silhouette passed by him within five feet, didn’t notice him, and headed across the yard and rounded the house. R.B. got up and followed. He found the man with his face stuck against the window of R.B.’s daughter’s bedroom, his hands cupped around his eyes. (It so happened that previously, the screen had been removed from the window. The girl’s parents accused her of wanting to sneak out. She adamantly denied that she had anything to do with removing the screen.)




R.B. immediately whacked the man with the baseball bat between his shoulder blades. The man took off. The chase lasted several minutes, with R.B. on the phone to 911. The chase went as far as Pine Grove Drive then doubled back through several yards and vacant lots, where R.B. got entangled in vegetation and lost sight of the alleged stalker. R.B. described him as a male in his late teens, about 6 feet tall. A resident of Pine Hill lane provided security system  video hat showed two men running between houses, one of them yelling out, “Call the cops! Call the cops! Somebody call the cops!”

Sheriff’s interviews with residents in the neighborhood determined that the man typically walked his small dog around the neighborhood, with a cell in his hand–not an unusual sight either way–and that he had a slight lisp. The investigative deputy “developed a person of interest” in Damon Smith, who has a small dog, a lisp, and walks around the neighborhood. The deputy paid him a visit–a block away from where the stalking incident took place. Smith conceded that he’d been out that night, and that he’d been chased by “some guy.” When the deputy asked him why, Smith said: “He said something about his window, I guess, I don’t know.” He said he had been near a window, but had not been nosy about it.

The deputy asked to see Smith’s upper torso, front and back. There were no signs of injuries consistent with being struck by a bat, the deputy noted in the arrest report. Smith said the other man had swung the bat at him but missed before he ran toward Pine Hill lane. He said the man–R.B.–“kept following me like I  literally tried breaking into his house, but I wasn’t.”




But when the deputy asked Smith why he goes around other people’s houses, the deputy reported that he said “something similar to, he gets a thrill and adrenaline from it.” He faces an aggravated stalking charge, a third-degree felony, and a sex-offense voyeurism charge, a first degree misdemeanor. He’s being held at the Flagler County jail on $85,000 bond, $75,000 of it for the aggravated stalking charge.