Woman Who Wanted Boyfriend Arrested Ends Up Arrested Herself

Late Sunday afternoon Flagler County Sheriff’s deputies were called to the BP station on Palm Coast Parkway about a possible altercation. Tawnya Trudeau, a 52-year-old resident of Felshire Lane in Palm Coast, claimed her boyfriend of nine years, Matthew De Graw, who’s currently on probation for felony battery and witness tampering, had hit her 10 times on the head and elsewhere with a broom stick and a wiffle ball. She declined to go to the hospital.

Before the evening was over, she’d been booked at the Flagler County jail on three third-degree felony charges: resisting arrest with violence–a charge identical to one she incurred eight years ago, though it was reduced to a conviction for disorderly conduct–battery on a law enforcement officer, and introducing contraband in a jail. In the last four years, she was twice charged with battery. The charges were dropped both times.

Deputies saw no sign of bruising on her other than a laceration on her ankle. At the Felshire Lane home, De Graw told deputies there’d been an argument, but nothing more. Trudeau had been upset over two roommates living at the house. According to De Graw, she’d woken up enraged at them for smoking meth. She wanted them out of the house. She then allegedly threw items around the house, destroying De Graw’s belongings, and herself picked up a wiffle ball bat and began to hit his feet with it to annoy him. De Graw then “grabbed the bat from her to stop her from hitting” him before she left for the BP station to get beer.

The two roommates said their door was open. They said they saw or heard no altercation. Meanwhile, Trudeau decided to go to the shelter for victims of domestic abuse. She did not feel safe returning to the house. But she wanted to collect a few belongings. As she did so, she progressively became upset again, this time against deputies, according to her arrest report. She couldn’t believe De Graw was not in handcuffs and heading for jail. Deputies told her their investigation was still ongoing.

As she walked outside with belongings, “she became more angry due to [De Graw] still being inside the home and not being arrested,” her arrest report states. She then changed her mind. She didn’t want to go anywhere. She insisted that deputies arrest De Graw and started yelling profanities at the deputies, accusing them of not knowing what they were doing. When a deputy asked her to step in front of a patrol car, she refused, drowning the deputies’ words in profanities. A deputy told her she’d be detained for obstructing the investigation. She walked away. The deputy grabbed her wrist. She “pulled away” from one of the deputies as she allegedly struck him in the right arm with a closed fist.

At the jail, she was found to have a prescription pill, without a prescription, resulting in the additional charge. She remains at the county jail on $4,500 bond. De Graw was not charged, but a probation violation was filed against him in May in an unrelated incident. He is due in court on July 13 on that violation, which reopened his case from 2017.