54-Year-Old Palm Coast Man Wanted in Flagler Beach Shooting Found Dead of Apparent Self-Inflicted Gunshot

Yairton Garcia, the 54-year-old Palm Coast and Daytona Beach resident suspected by Flagler Beach police of shooting and wounding a man in Flagler Beach in the early morning of Oct. 5, was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound at a Lake Charles house in Palm Coast on Wednesday after Flagler County Sheriff’s deputies had surrounded the house and sent in a robot to investigate Garcia’s whereabouts.

Garcia had faced a felony charge of false imprisonment last year, but the charge was dropped.




At minutes after 6 a.m. on Oct. 5, a Flagler Beach police officer was dispatched to find “a Black male lying in the road coated in blood” in the 200 block of State Road 100 in Flagler Beach. The victim was “tucked against a fence blocking off the construction zone” for the Margaritaville hotel under construction. The victim was holding his right arm, which was actively bleeding. He was conscious and alert. “His demeanor was calm. But he did not appear to be in shock,” an incident report states.

Being from Nicaragua, as detectives later found out, the 60-year-old victim spoke Spanish and very little English. He’d been carrying a satchel with two cell phones and $300 in cash, all of it “removed from his person immediately after he sustained his gunshot injury,” an incident report states. The victim said he’d been robbed, though many of his statements to officers, Flagler County Sheriff’s deputies and Flagler Beach detectives were contradictory, or perhaps lost in translation.

He told detectives that “he went to Johnny D’s Bar/Restaurant last night by way of an Uber around midnight,” an incident report states. “No one accompanied him. After about thirty minutes, he decided to go home, alone. He made mention that someone shot him by the stairs. It should be noted that Johnny D’s does not have any stairs. He was then pressed as to the location of the bar/restaurant and finally stated Finn’s Bar & Restaurant.” Latin Night was taking place there that night, according to a Flagler Beach police summary of the incident.




The man said he’d been shot between midnight and 1 a.m. and hid in the construction site out of fear of getting killed by his assailants. The trail of blood went from the construction site to the 300 block on North Oceanshore Boulevard, where one 9mm shell casing was recovered, from the east side of the road near the dunes. The Faro Beachside Eatery provided surveillance footage showing the shooting in real time. Combined with video from Finn’s, police were able to recreate parts of the night.

The victim and his friend arrived in Flagler Beach shortly before 10:30 pm on the night of Oct. 4–not by Uber, as the victim had told an officer. They parked in the 300 block of N. Oceanshore Blvd. and walked to Finn’s to partake in Latin Night. There were no issues. The victim leaves the bar at 1:27 with his friend. They catch up with a woman he’d been dancing with earlier. The woman was later identified as Mistina Hernandez of New Kings Road in Jacksonville.

A man who’d been seen in video arriving and leaving with Hernandez got into a verbal confrontation with the victim in the 2200 block of North Oceanshore. The victim and his friend are seen walking away from the man and from Hernandez, back to their vehicle, quickly, but the suspect followed behind. The victim’s friend seemed to try to get into the car only to run off. “The victim can also be seen running to the car, turning around, and facing the shooter, who fired one round at the victim, striking him in the arm,” according to the summary prepared by Lance Blanchette, the Flagler Beach acting police chief. “The suspect is seen attempting to run after the victim but is stopped by Hernandez. Both got into their vehicle, which was coincidently parked several spaces south of the victim’s vehicle.” They fled the scene.




Detectives interviewed a witness who did not want to get involved, but who said that the shooting was over a girl the victim had been dancing with and hitting on. The girl was believed to be the suspect’s girlfriend.

An investigation led to the identification of Hernandez and her Jacksonville house, which Flagler Beach detectives surveilled without getting substantial information–until Wednesday, when her car triggered a license plate reader in Palm Coast off Matanzas Woods Parkway. That and other documentation helped investigators locate her at 15 Lake Charles Lane. By then investigators had confirmed a link between her and Garcia.

After surveillance of that house, sheriff’s deputies carried out a “probable cause” traffic stop on Hernandez, who confirmed that she and Garcia had been at Finn’s the night of the shooting, . “She attempted to claim she and Garcia were in fear of being attacked,” Blanchete’s summary states. “They were being surrounded by the victim and his friend, she was in fear of being ‘gang raped,’ and Garcia was only trying to protect her by firing a warning round.” Video evidence contradicted Hernandez’s account of events, the summary states, “and showed that Hernandez and Garcia had ample opportunity to leave in their vehicle; however, Garcia and Hernandez passed their own vehicle to pursue the victim and his friend.”

“Garcia maliciously and intentionally pointed his firearm at the victim, who was running away from him, and shot him at a close distance,” the summary states.




Law enforcement obtained a search warrant for the Lake Charles house, which Flagler County Sheriff’s Office deputies and the SWAT team surrounded at 9:20 that evening, to serve the warrant. Numerous attempts to get Garcia out of the house, using a public address system, successfully got several people out of the house, but not Garcia. He did not answer his phone, either.

“Knowing that Garcia was armed,” the summary states, the sheriff’s office sent in its robot just before 1 a.m. Thursday morning to search the house and locate Garcia. “During the sear ch, he was found deceased on the bathroom floor from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

The Flagler County Sheriffs Office was instrumental in all facets of the investigation, Blanchette said. “Both agencies were consistent in their desire for a successful outcome of the investigation. Unfortunately, Mr. Garcia’s decisions contradicted those desires,” he said.