FLAGLER

Sheriff: Son stabbed mom to death in Palm Coast

Matt Bruce
matt.bruce@news-jrnl.com
Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly comments on the arrest of Nathaniel Shimmel in the first-degree murder of Shimmel's mother, Michelle Shimmel, on Thursday at the sheriff's Operations Center in Bunnell. August 24, 2017. [News-Journal/Nigel Cook]

PALM COAST — Michele Shimmel confronted her 22-year-old son, Nathaniel Shimmel, in the kitchen of their Palm Coast home Wednesday night and asked him why he was not looking for a job.

As he turned to walk away, she grabbed his arm and demanded that he look at her. She also threatened to kick him out of the family’s home at 47 Woodhollow Lane.

Nathaniel Shimmel told a Flagler County sheriff's detective that’s when he panicked. What ensued was a bloody, deadly attack that began with Nathaniel Shimmel picking up a kitchen knife and ended with Michele Shimmel, 60, lying face down in her front yard with multiple stab wounds and the knife lodged in her back, according to authorities.

“I can tell you that this was a very brutal, a very violent and apparently angry murder,” Sheriff Rick Staly said Thursday afternoon at the agency’s Operations Center.

Detectives arrested Nathaniel Shimmel early Thursday morning and charged him with first-degree murder. He appeared before County Judge Melissa Moore Stens, who denied bail. He remains in the Flagler County jail and is set to be arraigned Sept. 25.

The domestic drama unfolded after deputies received a 9-1-1 call shortly before 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. They arrived at the Woodhollow Lane home and discovered Michele Shimmel lying face down in the front yard with a knife in her back. She was pronounced dead by paramedics a short time later, according to Sheriff’s Office spokesman Mark Strobridge.

According to the arrest report, it was Nathaniel Shimmel who made the 9-1-1 call. In a recording of the call, he can be heard calmly telling a dispatcher that a man wearing a "robber mask" had stabbed his mother at least one time in the back. He said he was on the family's back porch when he heard screaming and went to the front yard where he found his mother lying face down while the tall, masked assailant was standing near her. He said the man fled on foot and Shimmel ran to a friend's house on Wellshire Lane without assisting his mother.

That's when he called the Sheriff's Office and waited for deputies to arrive.

Staly said when deputies first encountered Shimmel at the Wellshire Lane home, he was covered in blood. Detectives questioned him for several hours at the Operations Center until he broke down crying and eventually confessed, initially claiming the deadly attack was an accident, according to the report. He later told detectives he had lost his composure while arguing with his mother and had stabbed her in the throat with a kitchen knife.

Staly indicated Michele Shimmel tried to escape as Nathaniel chased her, stabbing her several more times before she collapsed just outside the front door. The sheriff noted that Nathaniel Shimmel then stabbed her one last time in the back.

According to the arrest report, Nathaniel Shimmel told a detective he just “watched her die.” He later went on to say "there is no God who would forgive what he has done," the report states.

"I just kept stabbing," Shimmel said. "She tried to get away, so I grabbed her … I knew I was going to jail."

Family members at the scene Wednesday night declined to speak with reporters. There was little activity outside the home Thursday morning, other than a few deputies and investigators guarding the taped-off crime scene. 

Wednesday's slaying is the third homicide in Flagler County since January. All three have been tied to domestic violence. In April, Bobby Gore shot his son in the head during an argument in the backyard of the family's Flagler Beach home, according to authorities. In May, Dorothy Singer was charged with killing her legally blind husband and concealing his death for several weeks by hiding his decomposing body beneath a jon boat in the Bunnell couple's backyard.

Staly said Flagler averages about two or three domestic violence arrests per day. In June he established a countywide task force to address the issue. The coalition of law enforcement officers, court administrators, judicial officials, mental health and medical experts continues to meet to discuss ways to combat domestic violence in the county. The task force had its third workshop Tuesday and Staly said he hopes committees will make recommendations for education and intervention by October.

“That’s the problem with domestic violence is you never know what goes on behind closed doors until it boils over,” he said Thursday. “It just seems to me we are becoming a more violent society, and that we are solving issues with violence.”

Staff Writer Tony Holt contributed to this story.