- November 14, 2024
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An 8-year-old Hammock girl was playing outside when a 60-year-old neighbor motioned to get her attention, and then exposed himself to her, the girl told her parents, and, later, a Flagler County Sheriff's Office deputy.
The man, Shady Lane resident Mark Steven Hall, has been charged with lewd and lascivious exhibition to a child under the age of 16. He is deaf, and was unable to answer deputies' questions, according to a deputy's report.
The incident happened at about 1:08 p.m. May 14.
The girl's father told a deputy that the girl, who is homeschooled, was playing in the yard when she came inside and asked to talk to her mother. The mother told the father that the daughter said their neighbor had gestured to get her attention, then pulled his penis out of the top of his pants and motioned to the girl to come over to him. The girl instead went inside her house.
The father told the deputy "that he was restraining himself from going over to (Hall's) house and 'doing something he would go to jail for, for a long time,'" the deputy wrote in a report.
A second deputy spoke to the girl, who "was visibly upset, and began crying, while talking about the matter." The girl acknowledged that she knew the difference between lying and telling the truth, and that she agreed to only speak the truth. She told the deputy she was playing in the yard when her neighbor, who was deaf and had long hair, gestured to her. When she looked over, he exposed his penis, then motioned to her to come over, she said. The girl "did not believe he was trying to urinate but was showing 'it' to her," the deputy wrote in a report.
The first deputy went to Hall's house and found him sitting on the front porch with his roommate, 55-year-old David Gregory.
The deputy asked Gregory what the two men had been doing for the last hour or so. Gregory said they had been on the porch, and that he had fallen asleep for a while.
The deputy then asked Gregory if Hall could read lips, and he said he could a bit. The deputy asked Hall what he'd been doing for the past hour, but Hall "seemed confused with my question and was unable to answer," the deputy wrote on the report.
The deputy then tried writing questions down on a note pad, but Hall again looked confused, then finally wrote down, "What mean." The deputy contacted dispatch and tried to get a American Sign Language interpreter, but wasn't able to.
Gregory told the deputy that another neighbor knew some American Sign Language. That neighbor used American Sign Language to ask Hall what he'd been doing for the last hour, and Hall responded that he'd been sitting on his porch and that he walked around the yard briefly near his pump house. The deputy asked the neighbor to ask Hall if Hall had urinated in the yard. Hall replied that he had not.
The neighbor told the deputy "that the only thing he was able to get from (Hall) was that there was someone over the house four hours earlier named 'Ed' and he urinated in the front yard."
The two deputies agreed that probable cause existed to arrest Hall. The neighbor who knew American Sign Language explained to Hall why he was being arrested.
Hall remained in jail the morning of May 19 on $10,000 bond.
