BY DAN HILDEBRAN
General manager
A judge revoked the bond of a Lake City man who was accused in July of shooting at a driver north of Lawtey.
On July 17, Christopher Mark Nicklas, 33, was arrested for improperly exhibiting a firearm, discharging a firearm from a vehicle, aggravated assault, DUI, and refusal to submit to a DUI test after a license suspension.
The victim told a Bradford deputy, “Nicklas started to drive aggressively by cutting in front of him, trying to turn into him, and changing his speed from fast to slow,” the deputy wrote in an arrest report. “(The victim) admitted he was driving fast to try to get away from Nicklas due to his aggressive driving but not before Nicklas pulled out a black in color handgun and pointed at him.”
The victim added that while viewing Nicklas in his rear-view mirror, he saw the weapon pointed in his direction and heard gunshots.
A judge released Nicklas on a $57,000 bond; however, on November 24, Union deputies arrested him at the Lake Butler McDonald’s for disorderly intoxication.
According to an arrest report, the defendant was the boyfriend of one of the eatery’s employees, and the pair had a verbal altercation at the restaurant.
Deputy Staci L. Stock reported that she could smell alcohol on the breath of Nicklas and told him to leave the premises. After he walked away and Stock left the scene, she was called back to McDonald’s five minutes later.
There, she found Nicklas underneath the Dodge Ram jointly owned by him and his girlfriend. Dispatch told the deputy Nicklas was trying to dismantle the gears under the vehicle. Stock wrote that she arrested the man “due to him being intoxicated, causing a scene and disrupting (the) business, due (to) customers calling in on him acting out in the parking lot.”
