Police Lock Down Bridgehaven Drive in Standoff With Suicidal Man

A law enforcement situation involving a person who’d barricaded himself on Bridgehaven Drive this afternoon led the Flagler County Sheriff’s deputies to close off streets in that neighborhood and divert a school bus from making its usual run and dropping off elementary age students at their regular bus stops.

The situation was resolved peacefully at 5:45 p.m. when the man surrendered.




The incident began at 4 p.m. at 20 Bridgehaven, with a heavy presence of sheriff’s deputies in the area, and residents and motorists asked to avoid the area. The situation was not a threat to the public at large. A 40-year-old man was in the house, threatening self-harm, with negotiators outside the house attempting to dissuade him.

A Flagler County schools spokesperson said the Sheriff’s Office asked that some of the parents of children on the bus, which serves the area of the B Section, including Bridgehaven Drive, to pick up their children at a different location, since the bus could not go down Bridgehaven. The district’s transportation director said the children were picked up by parents as instructed and the bus resumed and completed its route away from the incident area.

About a dozen units of the Sheriff’s Office had converged to the scene moments after the incident began, along with a Flagler County Fire Rescue unit and a Palm Coast Fire Department engine. The man in the house is on probation for battery and domestic assault on a person older than 65. Sheriff’s deputies have responded to the address a few times in the past several years.

For the Sheriff’s Office, it was the third stand-off in four months with a suicidal person, the first two involving threats of using firearms. In April, a 43-year-old woman eventually shot herself after a seven-hour standoff at Palm Coast Plantation. The following month, a 51-year-old man who’d threatened to shoot himself surrendered after nearly eight hours in the W Section.