A voter enters the polling place at the Beaches Branch Library in October 2024.
Published on January 28, 2025 at 12:58 pm
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The State Attorney’s Office said it will not be follow through on charges against an 18-year-old accused of antagonizing Kamala Harris supporters with a machete at a polling precinct in Neptune Beach.
Police said the teen was part of a group of eight teenagers, ages 16 to 18, who pulled up to the Beaches Branch Library during early voting in late October and confronted a group of women holding political signs.
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At the time, the police chief said the teen, a Fletcher High student, aggressively brandished a machete toward two women, ages 71 and 54 years old.
He was charged with aggravated assault, improper exhibition of a firearm or dangerous weapon and voter intimidation and was ordered to stay at least 1,000 feet away from any polling locations unless he was voting himself.
But the State Attorney’s Office has since dropped all the charges against him.
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Prosecutors said he had no criminal history.
They said he was with his friends “holding tools” and “loudly supporting their presidential candidate” at the polling location, but “no voters left the poll due to intimidation.”
The State Attorney’s Office said that although the teen’s “act was ill advised and perhaps zealous” they don’t think the actions “rise to the level of voter intimidation.”
None of the other teens involved in the incident were charged.
News4Jax obtained the 911 call from a woman who watched when the teens pulled into the site and confronted the group.
“There’s a truck full of boys at the library pulling machetes out of their truck,” the frantic 911 caller said. “They got machetes.”
One of the sign holders, who did not want to be identified, said the teens approached her.
“There was so many people around us watching this going on,” she said.
The woman described the sequence of events.
“We’re standing there waving our signs in support of the Harris campaign and this group of teenagers pulled up in a black SUV. They pulled into the parking lot the wrong way screaming and yelling, waving their Trump flags.”
Records show the teen with the machete is a registered Republican.
“They come down to us about as close as you are to me waving their flag in my face. We turned around and told them to go away. We’re going to call the police,” she said.
“He was trying to scare us, you know, trying to intimidate us. That’s against the law to intimidate voters,” she said.
This story was produced by News4Jax, a Jacksonville Today news partner.
