Suicide By Gun Averted, Woman’s Face Burned With Cigarette, Good Samaritan Turns In $2,500

Aside from the garlic-knot incident that occupied deputies Friday night, three police incidents of note unfolded over the weekend in Flagler County.

Late Friday night (Feb. 19) Flagler County Sheriff’s deputy Michael Breckwoldt, a 13-year veteran of the force, averted a suicide by a 68-year-old woman who was wielding a Smith and Wesson .380 handgun and had earlier fired two shots at the Holiday Travel Park on Old Dixie Highway.

The call to 911 had come in between 9 and 9:30 p.m., when the dispatch center was advising cops that the woman may have been shooting at people. (That turned out not to be the case.) Once at the park, Breckwoldt made contact with Katherine Brazeal, the armed woman, who was walking inside the trailer park and saw her holding the black gun. He ordered her to drop it. She did not do so at first. Breckwoldt then un-holstered his firearm and pointed it at Brazeal, “again ordering her to drop the gun,” an incident report states.

Brazeal first tried to conceal the gun in her sweatshirt’s front pocket then complied with the order to drop the gun, and
Breckwoldt’s command to lay prone so he could secure her. Brazeal admitted to firing two rounds earlier, though the circumstances of her shooting the gun are unclear: the report is redacted in that regard. Brazeal was Baker Acted–that is, detained and sent for psychiatric evaluation under the law that enables police to do so when an individual fits certain criteria, such as being potentially a harm to herself or to others.

It is the latest in a growing list of incidents in the last several years involving Flagler County residents who, while armed and ready to use their weapons against themselves or others, were relatively peacefully disarmed, or at least prevented from causing any loss of life. Sheriff’s deputies have managed the several feats (in February 2013, in December 2014, and in September 2015) in either by firing “bean bags,” Tasers or, simply, persuasion. No deputy’s gun has had to be fired in any of those situations.

An Alleged Attack With a Cigarette

Jessica Griffin is a familiar face to the booking camera at the Flagler County jail. Since 2005, the 32-year-old current resident of 15 Renshaw Place in Palm Coast has been arrested on a worthless check charge (she successfully completed pre-trial intervention), she’s been found guilty of drunk driving, she’s violated probation, she was found guilty of domestic battery in 2012 (15 days at the county jail), and she’s faced a disorderly intoxication charge.

Saturday, Griffin got her first felony charge, for felony battery, after she was accused of snuffing a =lighted cigarette into the face of another woman.

The incident took place around 7 p.m. at the Renshaw Place house. The 53-year-old alleged victim, a woman, claims Griffin “burned the right side of her face with a cigarette and also knocked her to the ground, breaking her eye glasses, and causing a bump on the back of her head,” and causing a tooth to be knocked out, according to an arrest report.

Griffin happens to be dating the alleged victim’s son, coming and going from the residence “as she pleases and only uses her address for legal purposes,” the alleged victim told police.

Griffin, who appeared drunk to a deputy investigating the case, told the deputy that she never put a hand on the woman. Rather, she accused her boyfriend, 31-year-old Jonathan Sensenig, of being the aggressor. (Sensenig has been booked at the Flagler jail roughly as many times as Griffin, on charges ranging from battery to tampering with a witness and violating a no-contact order.)

He told police he was sleeping at the time of the incident and didn’t know what happened. He had small marks on his face but stated that they were caused by his work, from pieces of drywall falling and hitting him. A witness, however, told police that she saw Griffin attacking the victim and burn her in the face with a cigarette.

Griffin posted bail on $2,000 bond and was released.

A Good Samaritan Act

Julia Dubinskiy, a 44-year-old Russian immigrant and resident of Palm Coast, reported to police that she found $2,200 in cash in a SunTrust envelope at the intersection of U.S. 1 and Seminole Woods Boulevard on Sunday morning.

Dubinskiy knew nothing else of the envelope. She just wanted to turn it in to police. The envelope and cash were taken into law enforcement custody and placed within evidence located at the sheriff’s administrative office at 901 East Moody Boulevard. Dubinskiy could not provide a sworn written statement as she was conversant only in Russian.