Florida authorities have released disturbing new details about the kidnapping and alleged abuse of an 11-year-old boy who was reported missing and later found alive with a registered sex offender.
Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly said Friday that the boy had been missing from St. Johns County for at least three days. According to investigators, the child was kidnapped by Darnell Hairston, a 60-year-old sex offender from Hastings.
The boy told deputies that Hairston lured him to a wooded campsite in Flagler Estates, where he was held for "multiple days."
The child said Hairston choked him until he lost consciousness. When he woke up, the boy said Hairston threatened him with a knife, tied him up with shoelaces and an extension cord, and placed duct tape over his mouth, Staly said. Detectives searched Hairston’s truck, home and campsite, recovering duct tape, weapons, and surveillance equipment matching the child’s account.
Sheriff Staly said investigators believe the kidnapping may be connected to a separate alleged sex crime involving Hairston and another minor in St. Johns County, which the 11-year-old may have known about or even witnessed.
The sheriff said the child feared Hairston and believed he would be killed. The boy told deputies that when Hairston traveled anywhere, he was forced to hide under a blanket on the floorboard of the truck.
On New Year’s Eve, authorities stopped Hairson’s Ford F-150, finding the preteen, as well as a 15-year-old boy.
Officials placed the 11-year-old in a patrol car while Hairston tried to flee on foot, but deputies quickly tackled him. Hairston is accused of trying to grab a deputy’s gun during the struggle.
At the same time, the 15-year-old got back into Hairston’s truck and drove off, nearly running over the foot of a deputy who was holding Hairston on the ground, Staly said.
The teen crashed the truck into a deputy’s vehicle, went off the road, and flipped the truck, but the deputy was unharmed.
Authorities said the 15-year-old with Hairston may be a co-conspirator in the 11-year-old’s kidnapping. He faces grand theft charges for taking Hairston’s truck and had prior charges, including fleeing, battery on an officer, reckless driving, driving without a license, and resisting an officer.
Hairston now faces four additional charges — kidnapping, aggravated child abuse, battery by strangulation and robbery with a deadly weapon — on top of resisting an officer with violence and attempting to take a law enforcement officer’s firearm charges from the traffic stop.
Hairston is being held in jail, now without bond.
This case remains under investigation.
