8 Hour Armed Standoff Ends With Arrest Of Suspect

Palm Coast, FL – The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office (FCSO) takes a man into custody after deputies were locked into an armed standoff that lasted 8 hours in Palm Coast’s "S" section. Deputies were called to a Sesame Park home Friday night (February 19th) around 10:40 after dispatch received a report of a disturbance involving weapons. When law enforcement arrived on the scene, they met with two victims who said 48-year-old Charles Zinzow pointed a weapon at them and threatened to kill them before pointing the weapon at himself. The victims stated that everything happened after they returned home from a bar with Zinzow. They added that one of the victims was successful in taking a firearm from Zinzow before they ran from the house to call 911. While deputies were speaking to the victims, Zinzow called one of the victims and said he had two magazines, a rifle with "one in the chamber," and asked them to send law enforcement so he could "take one of them down with me." He continued to tell the victim that he was "ready to go" and would fire on any law enforcement that came close to the house. As the standoff carried on, one neighbor called 911 to make a report about a single gunshot that came from the home. Deputies called Zinzow, who explained that the gunshot was a "test shot" that was fired into a vacant lot beside the home. Around midnight, the FCSO Crisis Negotiator Team showed up and made contact with Zinzow in the hopes that he would give up and come peacefully. CNT and Zinzow ended up speaking on and off until about 4 a.m., which is when Zinzow told deputies that he was going to sleep. It wasn’t until 6:00 that morning when Zinzow agreed with the FCSO SWAT unit that he would come outside unarmed. An hour later, Zinzow was finally taken into custody, 8 hours after the first call went out. "Our team immediately recognized that this man was having a mental health episode but was still armed and they began working to de-escalate the situation and continued to do so throughout the entire night until he was safely taken into custody," Flagler Sheriff Rick Staly said. "This situation could have turned deadly, but through our defensive tactics and techniques training and de-escalation crisis intervention training the incident was peacefully resolved with no one getting hurt, even if it did take about 8 hours." Per FCSO, Zinzow was charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Records show that he remains in the Flagler County Jail on bond set at $20,000.