A Man Exposes Himself and Chases After Employee On Florida Hospital Flagler’s Walking Trail

Alonso Ricardo, a 51-year-old resident of Bunnell, was arrested on three charges Wednesday after a woman who was walking along the trail around the Florida Hospital Flagler property accused him of exposing himself then chasing her for some 1,300 feet.

The woman, a hospital employee, eventually tripped, fell and suffered brusies on her hands, elbow and knee as another employee noticed the incident, ran to her, and caused the alleged assailant to get in his car and drive off. The second employee had immediately yelled out for security and was able to photograph the man’s car as he sped away–evidence that then helped Flagler County Sheriff’s deputies apprehend the man at a house on County Road 13, to which the car was traced.

The incident took place at 1:30 p.m. on the walking trail that stretches along the east side of the hospital campus, on the far side of the parking lot, paralleling I-95. The victim was on her lunch break and exercising on the trail, reaching the furthest northern point of the trail, near a pond, while wearing headphones and listening to music.

“All of a sudden, she heard something similar to someone stepping on a branch on the ground,” Ricardo’s arrest report states. “She stopped and turned around. She discovered a dark skin black or Hispanic male was standing approximately 1 foot behind her. He was wearing a red t-shirt and ball cap. She looked down and observed the male had exposed himself by pulling out his penis and had his hand around it. The male was shaking his penis and stated” to the victim, ‘YOU WANT THIS?’ The male had an angry expression on his face.”

“Get away from me right now,” the woman yelled back, running away as fast as she could, according to the report. “While running away on the trail she looked back and realized the male was running and chasing after her. [The woman] kept running but the male continued to chase after her. This was a remote area and no persons were nearby. The male ran after her on the walking trail for approximately 1,300 feet.”

The woman tripped when she reached the parking lot. It was then that the employee who had been standing in the parking lot at the northeast corner noticed what had been unfolding. Initially the man came closer, mumbled something, then ran off and got into a white Honda CRV in the employee-only parking area. He drove off toward State Road 100, going east. By then the employee who’d come to the victim’s rescue had caught his license plate and called 911.

“We just had a perpetrator on the walking trail showing an employee his penis and do some awful motions,” she told the 911 dispatcher. “We got a copy of his license plate,” she said, describing the man, what he wore, and providing the license plate number. “He was exposing himself and, like, jacking off,” she said.

Two units went to the hospital, other units went to the County Road 13 address tied to the Honda’s license plate. (He had reportedly borrowed a car from a property owner there, but did not himself live there.) “While Deputy Cochran was at this address, a white Honda CRV pulled into the long driveway,” the report states. “The vehicle stopped at approximately 50 feet. It quickly reversed at a high rate of speed. Deputy Cochran got into his vehicle and reached the end of the driveway on County Road 13. He discovered the driver had reversed but spun out. The Hispanic male driver had bailed out of the vehicle and was running away on foot.” It was a short chase.

Ricardo was taken first to the hospital for a show-up with the victim, who became again quite shaken when she saw him, identifying him. Ricardo was charged with assault, exhibitionism, all misdemeanors, and resisting arrest and held on $1,500 bond.

Incidents of exhibitionism occur from time to time, but not often. Last June a 72-year-old man exposed himself to two teen girls at the Flagler Beach pier. Because the incident involved minors, he was charged with lewd and lascivious exhibitionism, a second-degree felony, but the man died several months later as the case was unfolding in court, before its disposition.

A month earlier a man had exposed himself to a younger girl on Shady Lane in Palm Coast. That incident involved an 8-year-old child. The initial charge was a second-degree felony of lewd or lascivious exhibition, later downgraded to indecent exposure, a first degree misdemeanor, to which the man plead guilty. He served six months at the county jail.