Overview
- Deputies served new warrants on Jan. 2 charging Darnell Hairston, 60, with kidnapping, aggravated child abuse, battery by strangulation, and robbery with a deadly weapon, and he is being held without bond.
- A Dec. 31 citizen tip about suspicious activity led Flagler County deputies to stop a truck and recover an 11-year-old reported missing from St. Johns County, who was taken to a hospital.
- Hairston initially was arrested after allegedly fleeing the stop and trying to grab a deputy’s firearm, resulting in earlier charges of resisting with violence and attempting to deprive an officer of a weapon.
- The child told deputies he was lured to a Flagler Estates campsite, choked unconscious, threatened with a knife and a firearm, bound with shoelaces and an extension cord, gagged with duct tape, and kept for multiple days.
- Search warrants of Hairston’s vehicle, his Hastings residence, and the campsite recovered duct tape, video surveillance equipment, and weapons; a 15-year-old who fled in the truck and crashed is in juvenile custody and being examined as a possible co-conspirator.