James Shepard, 52, of Palm Coast, had a “pee-brained” plan to beat his light sentence of probation and court-ordered drug tests. It did not survive the scrutiny of the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office. On July 14, a deputy stopped Shepard as he pulled in for his court-ordered drug class, the kind where he would have to hand over a urine sample. He drove there on a suspended license, which is a violation of the felony probation he was already serving for multiple burglaries and thefts, and deputies arrested him. Driving on a suspended license was crime number one. Crime number two was strapped to his groin. A jerry-rigged Whizzinator, a bogus bladder of fake (we hope) urine wired to a heating pad with a faux pizzle to make it convincing. On the way to jail, Shepard complained of a shoulder injury, so the deputy did him a courtesy and moved his handcuffs to the front. Our junior MacGyver repaid that kindness by using his newly freed hands to pull the cockamamie contraption out of his pants and fling it onto the floorboard of the patrol car. When the deputy asked him about the wet wiener on the floor, Shepard delivered the yellowest lie we’ve ever heard; it wasn’t his. Our in-car camera caught every second, and it was no accident and it WAS his! “This pee-brain dirtbag had already been given the deal of a lifetime, walking around on community control when he should have been sitting in a prison cell for almost a decade,” said Sheriff Rick Staly. “Shepard terrorized our home construction businesses and had stolen enough appliances to open an appliance store but was only sentenced to community control when his own sentencing scoresheet had him eligible for a minimum of 9 years in prison. Now he has a stream of new charges after flushing away a second chance to turn his life around. Instead, he tried to trick the system. Now he needs to go to prison!” Deputies arrested Shepard for driving without a valid license, violating his probation, defrauding a drug test, and tampering with evidence, he was transported to the Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Facility, where he is being held on no bond.
