No bond for suspect who beat Brevard deputies

A Brevard County judge today ordered a 22-year-old man to remain held without bond on charges that he used a collapsible baton to beat two Brevard County Sheriff's Office deputies so badly they required stitches and staples to their heads.

Skylar Francis was taken into custody Tuesday afternoon and charged with two counts of attempted murder of a law enforcement officer. He was taken to the Brevard County Jail Complex in Sharpes.

A second suspect, 22-year-old Courtney Johnson, was also arrested Tuesday but was bonded out of the jail early today after someone used a credit card over the phone to post her $500 bond on a resisting arrest without violence charge, records show.

The pair, who had no permanent address listed but lived in Mims, were suspected in a Tuesday attack that left two sheriff's deputies recovering today with non-life-threatening injuries.

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Deputies Michael Hriciso and Marie Skinner were taken to hospitals with injuries to their heads. Hriciso had three lacerations to the head and required numerous stitches to mend the wounds and Skinner suffered a hematoma to the back of the head along with a laceration that required multiple staples, officials reported.

Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey said the deputies were responding to a domestic disturbance call.

The deputies walked up to a fenced area and spotted the pair and asked them to come outside. Johnson looked over the fence and said, "I'm fine," leading to Hriciso to pull down the fence and move into the back yard. At one point, investigators said Hriciso and Skinner talked to the pair when the sound of the baton flipping open was heard.

One of the deputies managed to blunt the attack – with Hriciso being struck on top of the head – while a second radioed for help, Ivey said.

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"It absolutely angers me and frustrates me when I see one of my team that was hurt knowing that they went there to try to help somebody," Ivey said, standing along a street near the scene where the attack occurred.

The initial 911 call was reported around 11:25 a.m. on the 2600 block of Pineapple Avenue in a residential area in the small rural community north of Titusville.  A call that came from a person visiting a residence next door expressed concern for the woman.

"There's some kind of domestic violence going on over there. I can hear a girl being hit. She's screaming," said the unidentified caller.

She told 911 operators she believed there were guns in the house because "they are local hunters, like game hunters for the area."

The caller also expressed concern for her safety, saying her host's home had been "shot up last week on a random drive-by shooting."

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Investigators said the attack was so fierce that Francis got on top of Hriciso, straddling him and pounding him in the head with the baton repeatedly. As Deputy Skinner attempted to help her partner, she was struck in the head with a black metal object, causing her to fall to the ground, officials said. Investigators said Johnson stopped Francis from further striking the downed officer. Both were then arrested by the deputies and then transported to the Brevard County Jail.

Erika Mullins, a neighbor, said she felt reassured after learning from the sheriff that two people were taken into custody.

"It made us feel a lot better hearing from him that the suspects were apprehended," said Mullins, who has lived in the Mims neighborhood for six years. Earlier, Mullins was home when her husband returned from an errand to tell her about the heavy presence of police cars.

"He went to go out and came back and said that 'they're cops all over.' I walked out there and saw two or three ambulances. I looked like half the sheriff's office was out there," she said.

A medical helicopter, which landed at the ball field used by Mims Elementary School, took one of the deputies to Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne.

The injuries were the latest to involve law enforcement agents attacked while either responding to a call or investigating an incident. On Aug. 20, Brevard County sheriff’s agent Casey Smith was shot and critically wounded during a nighttime prostitution investigation in Port St. John. On June 14, Lt. Channing Taylor was shot in the shoulder in an incident at a gas station in Cocoa. Both survived their injuries and Taylor is now back to work.

Contact Gallop at 321-242-3642, jdgallop@floridatoday.com and on Twitter at @JDGallop. Contact Bonanno at 321-242-3662, cbonanno@floridatoday.com or follow Chris on Twitter @FTChrisBonanno.