Convicted Murderer With Prior Stalking History Sentenced to 15 Months for Stalking Girl, 15, in R-Section

It was a disturbing report of a repeat offense by a convicted violent felon several times over: in late March, a 15-year-old Matanzas High School student told the school resource deputy there that a man in his 40s or 50s had been accosting her, then befriending her, then stalking her at her R-Section bus stop on Palm Coast’s Ryan Drive, and once assaulting her physically. She had pictures and video.




The man was identified as Daniel Hilbert, 53, of 3 Rybell Place, a block away from the bus stop. In 1986, he was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 20 years. He escaped a few years later, was captured and sentenced to two additional years. He left prison in 2011. Five years later he was the subject of an injunction as a result of stalking another 15-year-old girl at her bus stop.

On Monday, Hilbert pleaded guilty to aggravated stalking and felony child abuse. He was sentenced to a year and three months in state prison, which he will have to serve day for day, making him ineligible for early release, followed by three years and nine months on probation.

His scoresheet had him facing 19.5 months in prison. There are “significant conditions” on his probation, Circuit Judge Terence Perkins said as he pronounced sentence.




“While this isn’t a sex offense per se, I think reading the Jimmy Rice provisions would be appropriate.,” Assistant State Attorney Melissa Clark, who negotiated the plea deal, told the court. The Jimmy Rice Act, enacted in 1999, authorizes the state to impose restrictions on sex offenders and predators, including confinement, beyond the terms of a sentence if the court finds it appropriate.

The child’s mother was attending the hearing by zoom. “I spoke to the attorney and I think that we both kind of agreed on the sentence,” she told the court, referring to Clark.  “It seems good enough.”

The victim was not in court. According to her account to authorities, Hilbert had been approaching her daily at the bus starting in early March. At first he’d do small talk. Then he started walking the girl home, or riding his motorcycle alongside her. In one case, he had her ride in his Kia Telluride (another man was also in the car. There was no physical contact.)

Hilbert then started appearing around her friend’s house, around her own house and as she and her friend would walk around the neighborhood. He would seek to pull her out of the group of students at the bus stop to speak with her. She would take alternate ways home to avoid him. He’d find her anyway and try to engage in conversation. He turned flirtatious. One afternoon as she was walking into her house, he asked if he could kiss her. She rebuffed him.




He grabbed her thigh with one hand, the back of her head with the other, and forced himself on her, “kissing” her on the mouth. That was right before spring break.

After spring break. he began speaking openly to her of his attraction to her, commenting about her clothes and her physical look, in one case pulling on her clothing’s elastic. He took her phone and put his phone number in there. The stalking continued until Hilbert’s arrest on March 28. He told deputies that his girlfriend has a 17-year-old child who goes to Matanzas High School, and that he often walks to the school bus because he has a child who gets on and off at that stop. He denied ever being inappropriate or physical with the girl, or taking her phone, or even knowing her name, though other students interviewed told deputies they heard him shout out the girl’s name to get her attention.

The stalking is also identical to the way he had stalked a girl in 2016, according to the descriptions provided by the girl’s father at the time when the family was seeking the injunction against him. Then, too, the victim lived next door. Then, too, Hilbert had tried to entice the girl to ride in his car, sought her phone number, asked her for a “hug” at the door of her house.

“I am scared for my [family’s] safety with a sicko like this living next door to my home,” the girl’s father wrote to the court at the time, seeking protection.

On Monday, the conditions Perkins imposed once Hilbert is released include no unsupervised contact with minors, a ban on visiting any place where children gather, including parks, amusement parks or child care centers, without permission from his probation officer, a ban on wearing any sort of Christmas or Halloween costume, required sex-offender treatment, and annual polygraphs at his expense.