BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Telegraph Staff Writer
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS— Leaders within the Clay County Sheriff’s Office said the agency is stepping up patrols on the Palatka-to-Lake Butler State Trail after a woman said she was threatened on the pathway by two men, one with a knife.
An audience member participating in a Sheriff’s NET meeting at Keystone’s St. William Catholic Church told the agency’s Assistant Chief of Patrol for southern Clay County that she heard about the incident on Facebook but did not know whether or not to believe it.
“It did happen,” responded Assistant Chief Jeremy Clark. “It, in so far as the elements of, at least from my perspective, the elements of the crime were met.”
In the social media post, Kristin Altman Norman wrote that two men ambushed her and a friend while they walked on the trail between 8:30 and 9:30 a.m.
“We were walking between CVS and Immokalee Road,” wrote Norman. “There was myself, my child in a stroller, my friend and her dog.”
The woman added that as her group approached the entrance to Park of the Palms, in a secluded area with trees and shrubs on both sides of the trail, a man emerged from the bushes, followed by a second man.
“The first guy pulled out a knife, opened it, and began to veer closer to us,” reported Norman. “Luckily, my friend’s dog jumped into action, and it backed the first guy off.”
Norman said the group then encountered the second man, who indicated he and the first man were friends.
“They ended up letting us go,” added the victim, “but not without starting to walk toward us again. Luckily, they did not run to follow us as they didn’t ever catch back up to us.”
Norman also complained that after calling the Clay sheriff’s office non-emergency number, she was bounced back and forth between dispatchers in Bradford and Clay Counties.
“They were NO HELP!” she wrote.
David Barnes, the sheriff’s director of patrol and community affairs, confirmed that the caller was transferred between agencies because the incident occurred in Clay County, and the victims walked back to their car, which was parked in Bradford County, before calling the sheriff’s office.
“We had a newer dispatcher that was going through training,” Barnes said. “When the lady told her she was calling from Bradford County, she got confused and dispatched it.”
Barnes told the audience that Immokalee Road and the surrounding streets straddle the county line, and the fact that the incident occurred in one county and was reported from another caused confusion.
“That did cause a little bit of a hiccup, and we own it,” said Barnes. “We messed up on it, but we made it right.”
Barnes also said investigators had identified one of the two men who approached the women and indicated that the criminal intent of the man holding the knife might not be clear-cut.
“Although technically the elements of an offense were made, there’s some speculation,” he said. “There may be some confusion about actual intent and things of that nature, so we’re digging into it. We’ve put a lot of man hours in it.”
Barnes added that his agency has already increased patrols on the trail, both by officers in uniform and in plain clothes.
“You’ll see some deputies on bikes down there,” he said. “You may have seen them already. Some of it’ll be covert; you won’t see it; some of it’ll be overt. But we are taking that very seriously, and we intend to make that trail safe for you to walk on.”
