- November 18, 2024
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When a partially-clothed woman ran screaming off the Palm Harbor Golf Course, yelling that she was on fire — she wasn’t, at least, not visibly — the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office deputy who took the call placed her in the back of his vehicle “for officer safety” and called paramedics.
But the woman, 22-year-old Nicole Ashley Rizzo, made “numerous statements about a methamphetamine lab in a location she called the island of the Palm Harbor Golf Course,” according to the deputy’s report. And when deputies checked the area, they found evidence she might have been right.
The incident began at about 5:30 p.m. May 15, according to a deputy’s report.
The call to the Sheriff’s Office reported a woman “acting erratic stating that she was on fire,” according to the report, and the responding deputy found Rizzo, standing shirtless in her bra, saying her skin was on fire and that she was running away from people who were trying to assault her.
Rizzo was already known to Flagler County deputies. She’d been arrested before on charges of possession of drug paraphernalia, probation violation and failure to appear, according to Flagler County jail records.
She said she’d been in the woods with five other people, most of them men, and that they were cooking meth. Two of those, people — one woman and one man — were trying to lure her into the woods and kill her, she told the deputy. She said they threw a chemical on her skin that made it feel as if it was burning.
Paramedics who evaluated Rizzo said she was under the influence of some kind of narcotics. She said she takes opiates, according to the report. The paramedics said her condition wasn’t life-threatening and released her back to the deputy, and she offered to show the deputy where the meth lab was.
Two deputies followed Rizzo about a quarter mile on foot into the wooded area of the golf course ear the canal that faced north parallel to Club House Drive, according to the report.
“After several possible locations, Nicole was able to lead us to an area that had apparently been occupied by someone,” the deputy wrote in the report. “As we approached this location, I observed a tent structure in the woods 100 yards east of our location.”
Rizzo said one of the meth-cookers used the tent.
The two deputies called for backup to search the area, and Rizzo “began pointing out items such as chairs, bottles and other things she say they placed in the woods to cook meth,” according to the report.
There was a green lawn chair leaning against a tree, and Rizzo said one of the people cooking meth had placed it there.
One of the deputies found a brown luggage bag and a plastic bag, and noticed the smell of propane. The deputies backed off and called a supervisor, saying they’d found evidence of a possible meth lab, and asking the supervisor to call out the Narcotics Unit.
The Narcotics Unit showed up at 7:48 p.m., and “upon further investigation it was determined that the materials found were a quantity of common household products commonly associated with the illegal production of Methamphetamines,” but there was no active cook or product in the bag, according to the repot.
Another woman at the scene, questioned separately from Rizzo and not named in the report, also told deputies there was a meth lab in the area Rizzo had indicated. She said that she and Rizzo had nothing to do with it.
The deputies on the scene turned the case over to Investigative Services for follow-up.
