FLAGLER COUNTY, Fla. – After a sex offender was caught with a missing 11-year-old boy at a traffic stop back in December, a 15-year-old suspect is now being pinned as his accomplice, according to the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office.
The incident happened along U.S. Highway 1 after someone called in about “suspicious activity,” prompting the traffic stop, deputies said.
At the time, deputies reported they found the driver — identified as 60-year-old Darnell Hairston of Hastings, a registered sex offender — as well as two juveniles.
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Investigators said they learned that the 11-year-old had been kidnapped and feared for his life, but as deputies gathered more information, Hairston tried to flee, though he tripped into the road.
But while deputies were busy catching Hairston, the other juvenile — 15-year-old Junior Bishop from Hastings — got back into the truck and drove off, nearly striking a deputy in the roadway, the sheriff’s office stated.
This reportedly kick-started a chase that eventually ended with Bishop ramming into a deputy’s patrol car, causing both vehicles to crash into the wood line and allowing law enforcement to finally take him into custody.
Hairston now faces charges of kidnapping, battery by strangulation, robbery with a firearm, aggravated child abuse, and resisting arrest over what investigators said he did to the kidnapped boy.
Meanwhile, Bishop is being charged as an adult, facing charges of aggravated battery on an officer, fleeing and eluding at a reckless speed, grand theft of a motor vehicle, reckless driving, operating a vehicle without a driver’s license, and resisting an officer without violence.
On Thursday, the FCSO announced that Bishop had a new charge tacked on, too: armed kidnapping.
“As I stated originally, I thought Bishop was involved in the kidnapping, but we just had to prove it,” Sheriff Rick Staly said. “Our detectives worked hard to prove Bishop’s involvement after he had not been truthful during the initial investigation. In the end, our investigation showed he was fully involved in the acts to lure the victim into Hairston’s grasp, and they terrorized him together.”
During an interview with the missing child, investigators said they learned that he had been lured to a wooded campsite in Flagler Estates, where Hairston choked him until he lost consciousness.
After waking back up, the boy said, he was threatened with a knife and firearm, tied up with shoelaces and an extension cord, and had duct tape placed over his mouth.
“The child also told detectives that Hairston held him at the campsite for multiple days and made him travel on the floorboard of his truck covered by a blanket,” the release continues.
After searching Hairston’s truck, his home in Hastings, and the campsite, detectives said they found duct tape, video surveillance equipment, and weapons that matched the child’s story.
Furthermore, an interview with Hairston revealed that he knew the boy was missing and endangered, but he couldn’t explain why he kept him from his parents, detectives added.
According to the sheriff’s office, Hairston had been serving a 12-year sentence for three counts of false imprisonment.
Deputies also said he has previous arrests for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, burglary with assault/battery, cruelty toward wife, disorderly intoxication, lewd/lascivious offenses committed upon a child, property damage, and sexual battery.