- November 17, 2024
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Deputies attempting to arrest a Palm Coast man on a warrant over a June Walmart theft — he is accused of stealing $791.71 in lawn care equipment — had to use a stun gun multiple times after the man “went off in a violent rage,” according to an arrest report.
Deputies arrived at the home of 47-year-old Palm Coast resident Scott Lewis Swartz at about 2:26 a.m. Nov. 20. A woman answered, and let deputies inside after they told her they had a warrant for Swartz’s arrest for grand theft.
He came out of a bedroom saying he hadn’t stolen anything, according to the report, and when a deputy told him he was under arrest, he “fell to the floor and started shaking,” according to the arrest report.
Deputies called a medical unit, and Swartz talked to them as he was having the apparent seizure, but wouldn’t answer questions. The medical staff “stated that he may not have had an actual seizure as most people who do would not be able to talk at all,” according to the report.
The rescuers tried to get information from Swartz to provide medical help, but he wouldn’t cooperate and “went off in a violent rage, knocking things off the table, throwing chairs to the side as well as flipping a table in the direction of law enforcement and medical units,” a deputy wrote in the arrest report.
The report noted that Swartz’s mother was sitting in a chair as he went off, and that he “did this with disregard for her safety.”
One deputy pulled a dart-firing stun gun and told Swartz to stop resisting, and obey commands. He didn’t, and the deputy fired the stun gun. “I could see that Mr. Swartz was stuck in the cheek,” another deputy wrote in the report, “however, I did not see if the second probe hit him as he was not phased and was still moving towards” the other deputy.
A second deputy in the room fired another stun gun. “I observed the probe go into D/S Swartz’s back, however again I did not see a second probe and Mr. Swartz was still not going down” or obeying commands, the deputy who filled out the report wrote.
Then, the deputy wrote in the report, “I observed Mr. Swartz pull out the probe from his left cheek and continue his rage; I then pulled my Dart Firing Stun Gun out of its holster and fired at Mr. Swartz striking him in the back.”
This time, the deputy saw both probes hit, and Swartz “went down to the ground and began to obey commands.” A deputy handcuffed him, and told him to stop resisting and relax. “Mr. Swartz did look at me and nodded his head in an up and down manner and began to comply with my instructions, and stated, ‘OK,’” according to the report.
The rescue unit took Swartz to Florida Hospital Flagler, his legs restrained to the stretcher.
When they got there, the deputy wrote in the arrest report, Swartz “began acting out again by taking one of the cords from the heart monitor and wrapping around his neck.” The deputy stopped him. But then a nurse told him he would be discharged from the hospital, and “he again started acting out by banging his head on the side rails,” in front of hospital staff. He was not injured, according to the report, and deputies took him to the Flagler County jail on charges of grand theft and of resisting arrest with violence.
The deputy wrote in the report that Swartz was discharged by the attending emergency room physician “without findings that Mr. Swartz was having medical issues.”
