The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office did a sweep of the Matanzas High School parking lot after an apparent explosives scare on-campus. Sheriff Rick Staly briefed local media on Wednesday and emphasized that there was no threat placed to Matanzas High School.
On Wednesday afternoon it became clear that one car parked at the high school was believed to possibly contain some sort of materials related to explosives or pyrotechnics. One report to media from the FCSO called them ‘modified fireworks’. Staly said that ‘investigative leads’ brought the Sheriff’s Office to the vehicle at Matanzas High School.
Two other investigations are ongoing in Palm Coast which were tied to the Matanzas search, though Staly did not confirm whether any two of the incidents, or all three, were related. The other two investigations are still underway in the L Section and S Section neighborhoods.
A search was conducted of the parking lot where one of the FCSO’s bomb-sniffing dog identified a vehicle as having potentially contained suspicious materials. The campus initiated a controlled dismissal, in which bus riders and car riders were enabled to leave school first followed by the students in another parking lot separate from the one where the car in question was parked.
The FCSO obtained a search warrant for the vehicle, which belonged to a student. The St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office bomb squad also responded as a precaution. “A positive hit doesn’t mean that there was anything active currently in that vehicle,” Staly said. “What it means is that at some point there was something chemical in that vehicle that an explosive detection K9 would activate on, would respond [to]. It could be fireworks, it could be anything else that the K9 is trained [for].”
The student in question was taken for questioning with his mother, school faculty, and FCSO deputies. According to Sheriff Staly, he exercised his Fifth Amendment right not to speak to law enforcement. Staly clarified that the student was not placed under arrest, and that the incident in question stemmed from activities off-campus that somehow bled over onto MHS grounds.
“This had nothing to do with Matanzas High School outside of the individual being here and the vehicle being identified as here as well,” said Flagler Superintendent LaShakia Moore, who was with Staly at the media briefing. “We look forward to resuming normal activity here tomorrow at Matanzas High School as well as all of our Flagler schools.”
The students whose cars were located within the St. Johns County bomb squad’s 300-foot perimeter around the vehicle were kept in a hold at Matanzas until the area was cleared, Staly further explained. He complimented their conduct during the unusual delay in their homeward commute.
Chris Gollon is a Flagler County resident since 2004, as well as a staple of the local independent music scene and avid observer of Central Florida politics, arts, and recreation.
