John Jefferson
Danny Keith Phelps (Lake City Police Department).
A Florida bicyclist is accused of kidnapping a female driver at knifepoint after she allegedly hit him with her car while she was about to make her delivery rounds as a pharmacy technician.
Danny Keith Phelps, 67, faces charges of kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon, and tampering with a witness, online court records show.
An arrest report outlines the allegations stemming from Thursday’s incident. At 1:12 p.m. that day, police were called to a pharmacy in Lake City, about 60 miles east of Jacksonville, on a report of false imprisonment and aggravated assault.
Once there, an officer met the victim who told the officer that at about 11:30 a.m., she was leaving the pharmacy in her car to make medication deliveries in Live Oak when she encountered a man on a bike at a traffic light, the report said.
The victim told police she and the bicyclist waved at each other to go, but as soon as she began to roll forward, the man on the bike started moving into the intersection, the document said.
She “bumped into the subject, causing him to fall,” the arrest report said.
She told police she got out of her vehicle to check on the man and when she pulled out her phone to call for help, he smacked her phone out of her hand and told her she was not calling anyone, the document said.
“You’re going to give me a ride or I’m going to hurt you,” he allegedly told her, the report said.
Phelps put his hand in his pocket with what appeared to be an unknown object pointing toward her from inside the pocket, the report said.
Scared, the victim told police she put the man’s bike in the rear of the vehicle and gave him a ride, the arrest report said.
Phelps got into the front passenger seat and placed an opened pocketknife on his lap, the report said. He directed her to begin driving him to a location. When she got to the area, he directed her to stop the vehicle, and he got out and removed his bike and the two parted ways. She told police she never saw him again and returned to the pharmacy where she contacted police, according to the arrest report.
The following day, police received a phone call from the pharmacy telling investigators that a man identifying himself as Danny Phelps called the pharmacy, saying he had been hit by one of their vehicles the previous day and wanted them to replace his bike, the report said. He left a callback number, which police tracked down to an address, but didn’t find him that day, documents said.
On Saturday, Phelps apparently contacted the Lake City Police Department, reporting he was hit by a vehicle on Thursday while riding his bike.
In an interview with police two days later, Phelps allegedly told an officer he was crossing a road at a traffic light when a pharmacy vehicle hit him.
He said he wanted a ride home because his bike tire was “messed up,” the arrest report said.
He allegedly told the officer that the driver told him she wasn’t allowed to have passengers in her work vehicle but gave him a ride anyway, according to the document.
When the officer asked Phelps if the driver offered him a ride, he said, “not really, I said, ‘you need to give me a ride home’ and she said she’s not supposed to give anybody a ride and I said, ‘I don’t give a crap,”” the officer wrote in the report.
“Phelps stated that he was very mad and upset,” the arrest report said he told the officer.
Phelps allegedly said he told her she needed to return to his house later to “work out something for payment,” but she said she was engaged.
When the officer asked Phelps why she would say she was engaged in response to working out how to pay for his bike damages, Phelps said he wanted to “work out a relationship with her,” the document said.
When she didn’t return, Phelps began to contact the pharmacy about the incident, he allegedly told police.
Phelps was being held at the Columbia County Detention Center with bond set at $150,000.
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