{"id":312764,"date":"2026-06-19T05:56:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T05:56:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/312764\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T05:56:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T05:56:21","slug":"florida-man-stalked-publix-customers-with-a-knife-before-kicking-chickens-sheriffs-office-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/312764\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida man stalked Publix customers with a knife before kicking chickens, sheriff&#8217;s office says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/miami\/tag\/florida\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Florida<\/a> man is facing several charges after he was accused of terrifying customers inside a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/miami\/tag\/publix\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Publix<\/a> while armed with a knife, according to deputies.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/miami\/tag\/monroe-county-sheriffs-office\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Monroe County Sheriff&#8217;s Office<\/a> said John Paul Roberts, 50, of Umatilla, Florida, which is northwest of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/miami\/tag\/orlando\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Orlando<\/a>, was arrested Wednesday in the Florida Keys after the incident that prompted fear from those inside the store.<\/p>\n<p>      <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/cbsmiami-john-paul-roberts-1.jpg#.jpeg\" alt=\"cbsmiami-john-paul-roberts-1.jpg \" height=\"349\" width=\"620\" class=\" lazyload\"  loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                  John Paul Roberts<\/p>\n<p>                Monroe County Sheriff&#8217;s Office<\/p>\n<p>The sheriff&#8217;s office said that they were called to a Publix in Marathon around 7 p.m. after several people said Roberts would make eye contact with customers and them follow them around the store or out to their vehicles for no apparent reason.<\/p>\n<p>Roberts, according to the sheriff&#8217;s office, was armed with a knife that was sheathed.<\/p>\n<p>One customer said they ran from the store, and Roberts continued to follow them. Another customer said Roberts was also seen kicking and swatting chickens outside the store.<\/p>\n<p>According to deputies, Roberts failed to identify himself when they arrived. They checked security camera footage, which corroborated the victims&#8217; statements, and Roberts was arrested and taken to jail.<\/p>\n<p>He was charged with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/miami\/tag\/stalking\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">stalking<\/a>, disturbing the peace and obstruction for failure to identify himself to law enforcement.<\/p>\n<p>No injuries were reported.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Florida man is facing several charges after he was accused of terrifying customers inside a Publix while&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[265,28,30,2472,29,6341,5696,56934,2231,11108],"class_list":["post-312764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-crime","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-keys","tag-florida-news","tag-marathon","tag-monroe-county","tag-monroe-county-sheriff039s-office","tag-publix","tag-stalking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}