ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. – A candidate for the Florida House of Representatives says she and her husband were attacked outside a St. Johns County polling place Tuesday morning after a parking lot dispute turned violent. The St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office arrested a man in connection with the incident.
Dr. Diana Jordan-Baldwin is running in the Republican primary for House District 18 against incumbent state Rep. Kim Kendall.
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How it started
Jordan-Baldwin told News4Jax she arrived at the World Golf Village early voting site around 6 a.m. to set up a campaign tent and check on volunteers before heading to other locations.
Walking to her car, she encountered a man in a truck who had already confronted a code enforcement officer asking campaigns to take down their tents. The man was visibly agitated.
“I said, sir, I’m moving my car. You can go there,” Jordan-Baldwin said. “But he had his windows rolled up and he was just mouth — you could see him talking.”
She says the man then rolled his windows down and began shouting obscenities at her, demanding to know why she was walking while his car was moving. Jordan-Baldwin had gotten into her car at that point, but when the man got out of his truck and approached, she got back out, not wanting to be trapped inside her vehicle.
‘You don’t know his service’
That’s when Jordan-Baldwin says the confrontation took a painful turn. She says the man targeted her late husband’s military service.
“He said, ‘Lying (expletive), your late husband was not killed in the line of duty. Where did he die at?’” Jordan-Baldwin recalled. “I just got so emotional because I could not believe that he was attacking someone that he didn’t even know.”
Jordan-Baldwin responded directly. “I told him, ‘Don’t you dare speak about him. Sergeant First Class Christopher Dante Burks was a good man. He served his country, and a lot of us have freedom because of us — the ones who fought and for the ones that gave their life.’”
Husband steps in, punches thrown
Jordan-Baldwin says her current husband stepped between her and the man to try to defuse the situation, telling him to go to his car so everyone could go their separate ways. The man did not back down.
“He reached around him and he punched me in my left side of my face,” Jordan-Baldwin said. “And so my husband was like, ‘No, you’re not gonna hit my wife.’”
Her husband pushed the man back, but says the man swung at him, and the two ended up on the ground. Then she says the man struck her husband on the side of his head while he was down. Her husband has vertigo, which caused him to become dizzy and lose his footing after the blow.
Bystanders, including an older man and a security guard, stepped in to separate them. The suspect then got in his car and tried to leave, but witnesses photographed his license plate.
“That’s how we were able to give that to the police officers,” Jordan-Baldwin said.
Arrest made, incumbent responds
Deputies from the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office responded to the scene, interviewed witnesses, and photographed injuries to both Jordan-Baldwin and her husband. She says she stayed until authorities identified and arrested the suspect, which she confirmed happened on scene.
The sheriff’s office identified the suspect as Charles Hunt. He faces two counts of simple battery.
Jordan-Baldwin and her husband were left bruised and sore.
“This guy was swinging blows everywhere,” she said. “So people could have gotten hurt a lot worse. And if my head hit the concrete, it could have been a whole lot worse than what I’m going through right now.”
Incumbent Rep. Kim Kendall released a statement to News4Jax saying neither she nor her campaign staff were present at World Golf Village during the incident.
“I want to be absolutely clear: this is completely unacceptable. This is a horrible act, and we condemn such behavior,” Kendall said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with Diana Jordan-Baldwin.”
‘There’s no reason to put your hands on someone’
Despite the ordeal, Jordan-Baldwin said she hopes to eventually forgive the man — but wanted to be clear about the broader message.
“I don’t understand the world we live in that it’s okay for you to just outright hit somebody,” she said. “There’s no reason to put your hands on someone else.”
She added: “I just ask God to show him himself, and I hope that he could truly be able to see what he did and how hurtful it was — how he could have hurt more people. He could’ve seriously hurt my husband and me. So that’s what I want to forgive.”