BIG PINE KEY, Fla. – Deputies arrested a convicted felon in Big Pine Key Friday morning after they said he flashed a gun at a woman giving him a ride home from a bar and then groped her breasts as she drove.
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According to an arrest report from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, deputies were sent to the parking lot of the Big Pine Key Motel, at 30725 Overseas Highway, at around 1 a.m. after receiving a report from a woman that a man there was “going to shoot her.”
The report states a deputy encountered a man later identified as John Fitzpatrick, 41, of Hallandale Beach, dressed in “all black, wearing a red hat (and) carry(ing) a case of beer” walking away from a black Jeep.
As the deputy tried to detain him, he wrote that Fitzpatrick “pushed and pulled away” from him, “then tried to run up a flight of stairs.”
The deputy wrote that as he took Fitzpatrick to the ground, he “continued to resist my attempt to detain him and began to state he was a CIA agent.”
A “small” black gun fell out during the struggle, the report states. The serial number was scratched off.
After getting Fitzpatrick cuffed, the deputy wrote that he spoke to the victim in the case, a 48-year-old Big Pine Key woman.
According to the report, she told deputies that as she was “giving (Fitzpatrick) a ride home from Dockside bar, he “presented a firearm and stated he could be dangerous,” causing her to feel “threatened for her life and safety.”
“She said he then grabbed her right breast twice, to which he said he would be a better love maker than her husband,” the report states. “Her dress’s right strap was torn off due to the groping of the breast.”
Deputies said the woman hit him as she tried to get out of the Jeep and he grabbed her right wrist.
They arrested Fitzpatrick on seven criminal charges, including aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, resisting with violence, possession of a weapon by a convicted felon and unnatural or lascivious act.
According to the Florida Department of Corrections, Fitzpatrick was convicted of armed burglary in Pasco County in 2014 and spent nearly two years in the county jail.
He was in the Monroe County jail as of Friday afternoon, being held with no listed bond.
He’s scheduled to be arraigned May 22.