- November 18, 2024
-
-
Loading
Loading
A woman was at her home at about midnight July 12 when her front doorknob started to turn. A man began yelling incoherently and yanking the doorknob, according to a deputy’s report.
She called the Sheriff’s Office and told the man to leave, which he did.
When deputies arrived, they found a 47-year-old Matthew Clinton Robinson, a Palm Coast resident who has been arrested on four other occasions since January on drug-related charges and on charges of theft and of driving with a suspended license, according to county jail records.
Robinson struggled to keep his eyes open and maintain his balance as they questioned him about why he was there.
When deputies asked the him what he was doing banging on the woman’s door, he said he was looking for his sister, an Orlando resident he believed was visiting a Palm Coast friend. But the woman whose door he’d banged on didn’t know him or his sister.
Then they asked him if he had any weapons in his backpack.
He said he had an antique firearm tucked in a SunTrust Bank bag in his pack.
Deputies checked the pack and found the gun, a loaded single-shot black powder handgun of unknown make and model, according to the deputy's report.
Robinson showed the deputies a concealed weapons permit, but when they ran the permit number, they found that it had been suspended.
They checked the rest of Robinson's bag, and found Lorazepam, Hydrocodone, Hydromorphone and another pill they couldn’t immediately identify, according to the report.
Then the story got weird.
There was also a container of “white crystalline substance” that field-tested negative for cocaine, methamphetamines, ecstasy and heroin.
Deputies weren’t sure what it was.
Then they found a black plastic tube packed full of the white stuff, with a fuse sticking out of one end.
They asked Robinson what it was, and he said it was a smoke bomb his brother had made a year and a half ago, and that he’s been carrying it around ever since.
The deputies called in the St. Johns County Sheriffs Office Explosive Ordinance Disposal Team to deal with the smoke bomb, and placed Robinson in a patrol car, according to the report.
The explosive ordinance team took the suspected bomb to the Publix Parking lot at 298 Palm Coast Parkway N.E., ran diagnostics on it, and disassembled it.
It tested negative for the presence of explosive material, but the EOD team wasn’t sure what the white substance was either, and sent it to a lab for analysis.
The deputies arrested Robinson on charges of carry a concealed firearm, possession of a controlled substance without a prescription (two counts), possession of drug paraphernalia, loitering or prowling and planting a hoax bomb, and took him to the county jail.
