Sheriff’s Detectives Investigating Woman’s ‘Suspicious’ Fall from 2nd Floor at European Village

The 911 dispatch center got a call at 4:43 that morning reporting the fall. When deputies arrived, they saw Whitaker face down on the hard, tile surface of the ground below the apartments’ balconies, bleeding from the nose and exhibiting agonal breathing–a labored form of breathing often seen in severely injured people. Paramedics from the Palm Coast Fire Department took life-saving measures and transported Whitaker to a hospital.

Brett Lalomia, 49, told deputies he was Whitaker’s boyfriend of six years and a resident at the same apartment. According to a sheriff’s incident report, he told deputies that he wasn’t sure what had taken place. He first told them that he’d been sitting on the couch when he heard a “loud thump,” according to the report. He ran outside and saw that Whitaker had fallen, then ran downstairs and called 911. (According to Flagler County jail and court records, Lalomia had three arrests over a decade a go, one of them for fentanyl possession, and was found guilty of drug-related third-degree felonies on three occasions.)

Lalomia told deputies that his girlfriend allegedly “does inject fentanyl, and that it is very likely that she took it” that day, according to the report. (Fentanyl is a drug considerably more powerful than heroin.) Lalomia then told deputies “that law enforcement will not be entering his apartment, and at one point he attempted to walk away,” the report states. He said he and Whitaker had not been arguing.




A tenant from a nearby apartment waved down a deputy and informed the deputy of having been cleaning the patio right before the incident. The tenant reported hearing “a male and a female arguing in the apartment,” so the tenant went inside. The argument stopped, then the tenant heard a male yelling. “At that point [the tenant] heard a female scream, and as [the tenant] went out to the back porch… observed the female lying on the ground.” The tenant didn’t see anyone else around the woman.

“At this time the case is still under investigation,” a sheriff’s spokesperson said today. “Like any accident when someone is injured we have to review all sides to fully determine what has occurred and the woman is still hospitalized.”