Christmas Day Claim of Assault and False Imprisonment of Mother of 3 Lands Palm Coast Man in Jail

Matthew Robert Johnson, a 30-year-old resident of 13 Collins Lane in Palm Coast, was arrested the day after Christmas (just after 1 a.m.) and charged with false imprisonment, aggravated assault, tampering with a witness and battery following a Christmas-Day incident described to sheriff’s deputies by his ex-girlfriend and mother of three young children (3, 11 and 13 years old).

The woman, a resident of Palm Coast’s R-Section, and Johnson had lived together previously but had recently broken up. On Christmas Eve Johnson showed up at the woman’s house distraught, crying and calling her names, according to her account to police. He was upset because she was having a relationship with another man. She said she allowed him to sleep in her bed while she slept with her youngest son.

On Christmas morning, however, she found Johnson sitting in his truck in her driveway. She asked him to move so she could go to the bgas station. He invited her into his truck. “Come on,” he told her, “:I would never hurt you.” But soon after leaving the house she says he started “driving crazy,” going 70 on Rymfire Drive, a 45 zone. She demanded to get out of the truck, and when the truck was stopped at Rymfire and Royal Palms, did so. Johnson, she says, turned around and ordered her back in the truck. They argued. He apologized. She got back in the truck. He started driving “crazy”: again, she claims, and threatening to take her to her boyfriend’s house so Johnson could “see the shame in both their eyes.”

The woman begged him not to go to her boyfriend’s house, and when, at a red light, she tried to get out of the vehicle, he allegedly grabbed her arm, pulled her to him and told her she wasn;t getting out. When she tried to roll down the window to yell for help he allegedly covered her mouth, and when she reached for her phone, he snatched it from her, saying he was “sick of you saying you’re going to call the cops on me.”

According to the woman’s account, Johnson then turned onto U.S. 1 and started traveling at speeds of up to 100 mph.

“Are you ready?” he told her.

“Ready for what?” she asked.

“Are you ready to die? I’m going to flip this truck and kill us both,” she claims he told her. Then Johnson told her she wasn’t “worth me messing up my truck,” but that–according to the woman’s account–he would take her into the woods and kill her, bury her, then go get her boyfriend and do likewise with him, burying him next to her so they could be “together forever.” He then turned onto a dirt path and asked her again if she was ready to die.

He then exited the truck and started walking to her side of the vehicle, at which point, she claims, she got into the driver’s seat and put it in reverse even as Johnson was holding the handle of the door. She says she drove away from the scene, went home, picked up her three children and drove to Putnam County to drop them off at her father’s house. Late that afternoon she went to sheriff’s headquarters on East Moody Boulevard and reported the incident, showing a deputy a picture of Johnson’s truck, a 2012 Chevy, and asking to file charges against him.

A deputy located Johnson at his Collins Lane home at 1:08 a.m. the following morning, and arrested him. In the patrol car, Johnson said, according to the deputy’s arrest report: “There is nothing to say. I messed up.”

Johnson faces three felony charges and a misdemeanor. The evening of Dec. 26, he posted bail on $12,000 bond and was released.