- April 25, 2024
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A 48-year-old man was arrested Feb. 20 following an 8-hour standoff with Flagler County Sheriff's Office deputies after he threatened to shoot law enforcement officers and himself.
Suspect Charles Zinzow is charged with two counts of Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon.
“Our team immediately recognized that this man was having a mental health episode but was still armed, and they began working to de-escalate the situation and continued to do so throughout the entire night until he was safely taken into custody,” Sheriff Rick Staly said. “This situation could have turned deadly, but through our defensive tactics and techniques training and de-escalation crisis intervention training, the incident was peacefully resolved with no one getting hurt, even if it did take about 8 hours.”
Flagler County Sheriff’s Office deputies responded to Sesame Park in Palm Coast at 10:41 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 19, after receiving a call for service regarding a disturbance with weapons.
Deputies met with two victims who said that after returning home from a bar with 48-year-old Charles Kenneth Zinzow, Zinzow retrieved a firearm from the vehicle and pointed it at the two victims and threatened to kill them before turning and pointing it at himself.
One of the victims was able to safely remove the firearm from Zinzow before fleeing from the residence and calling law enforcement from a nearby park.
While deputies spoke with the victims, Zinzow called one of the victims and said he had a rifle, two loaded magazines, and one in the chamber and to send law enforcement to his house so he could “take one of them down with me.”
He continually told the victim that he was “ready to go” and would fire at any law enforcement officer that came near the house.
A neighbor called 911 to report hearing a single gunshot from the suspect’s residence. FCSO deputies made telephone contact with Zinzow, who admitted to firing a “test shot” into the vacant lot beside the home.
The FCSO Crisis Negotiator Team was called in just after midnight to try to speak with Zinzow and get him to put down the weapon and surrender. CNT spoke with Zinzow off and on until nearly 4 a.m., when Zinzow told CNT that he was going to sleep.
Around 6 a.m. on the morning of Feb. 20, the FCSO SWAT team made contact with Zinzow, and he eventually agreed to come outside unarmed. At 7 a.m., members of the FCSO SWAT team took Zinzow into custody.
Zinzow remains in the Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Facility on a $20,000 bond.
