- April 18, 2024
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A truck cut off a car. The car driver honked at the truck. The truck driver flipped his middle finger at the car driver. By the time the altercation was over, three people from the truck were arrested, two of them for violently attacking the four black teens in the car while screaming racial slurs and threatening to kill them.
The three occupants of the truck were white.
It started on Cypress Point Parkway at about 10 p.m. Sunday.
Four young people — 18-year-old Williams Wallenberg, 18-year-old Tyrik Christie, 19-year-old Dandley Jean-Louis and another passenger whose name is redacted in the arrest reports because he is 17 and underage — were in Jean-Louis’ car.
A white truck swerved in front of them and cut them off. Jean-Louis honked his horn.
As both vehicles turned south on Belle Terre Parkway, the white truck slowed down and fell parallel to the car, and “the occupants of the truck began ‘flicking off’ the other vehicle,’” according to the reports.
A woman in the truck, 25-year-old Palm Coast resident Samantha Smith, leaned out the window and threw a beer can at the car, striking it.
The car pulled off to the side of the road, and the truck followed and pulled over in front of the car.
The people in the truck got out of the truck. The people in the car got out of the car. And then the people from the truck began yelling profanity and racial slurs at the people from the car.
Two of the young men from the truck, 22-year-old Bunnell resident Zachary Parsley and 23-year-old Palm Coast resident Tyler Parsley, “immediately attacked the subjects from the other vehicle,” according to the report.
They started with their fists, but as the two groups began to separate, “Zachary (Parsley) pulled out a blue Kobalt collapsible box cutter and began swinging it at the four subjects from the other vehicle,” according to a deputy’s report. The report continues, “It is alleged that during that time, Zachary made the statement, ‘I’ll kill you (racial slur)!’ At the same time, Tyler made the statement ‘I’ll shoot these (racial slur)' and reached into his waistband,” but didn’t brandish a firearm.
The young woman, Smith, “grabbed the glasses off Dandley’s (Jean-Louis’) face, and in doing so struck Dandley, and threw the glasses across the street.”
Then she got in the truck and began backing it toward the car as Jean-Louis scrambled to move the car out of the way so she wouldn't hit it.
Zachary and Tyler Parsley got into the truck, and it sped off.
But witnesses had called the Sheriff's Office about a fight along Belle Terre Parkway, and when deputies arrived, the teens from the car described the truck.
Deputies conducted a traffic stop on it, and the young woman, Smith, “made a statement asking if they were being stopped in reference to the fight they were just involved in,” according to her arrest report.
A deputy searched Zachary Parsley and found the blue box cutter the teens said he’d swung at them.
Deputies arrested all three of them.
Zachary Parsley was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Tyler Parsley was charged with assault, and Samantha Smith was charged with battery and with throwing a deadly missile.
Deputies do not believe the attack was racially motivated. “It was just one person getting angry at another person, and they happened to be of a different race,” Flagler Sheriff’s Office Spokeswoman Paula Priester said.
All three of the people arrested have been released from jail on their own recognizance, according to court records.
Correction: This story has been corrected to reflect that the three individuals arrested were released on their own recognizance; a previous version stated that they were released on bond.
