Santa Rosa County, Florida’s Sheriff Bob Johnson is known to be vocal about supporting the state’s Stand Your Ground law so much that he encourages his citizens to shoot to kill an intruder.
He is also known for being politically divisive by publicly sharing his dislike for liberals.
I witnessed it myself at a meeting of Preserve Navarre, a group of residents & local business owners seeking to preserve what we love about Navarre, Florida, in January 2022 when he made his biased remarks and encouraged people to vote a certain way.
My husband Josh and I thought it was such an irresponsible narrative that the sheriff was putting out.
It went viral in the news and Sheriff Johnson even made an appearance on Fox & Friends.
At that time, I was working on the Rebekah Jones congressional campaign against Republican Matt Gaetz.
Jones is the whistleblower Governor Ron DeSantis targeted after she exposed his shady COVID numbers.
At the time, I hadn’t quite yet experienced the dangers of campaigning in a very MAGA area for a Democratic candidate.
Our opinion changed by not being so critical of the Sheriff’s comments, but when we were unfortunately in a position where we needed to use self-defense.
In Northwest Florida, no one is safe from criminals or the law with an agenda.
We have a Wild West Sheriff who went viral last spring with his controversial comments regarding shooting intruders to save the taxpayers money, but has remained silent on my husband’s case.
My husband Josh is an Air Force special operations veteran, and known to the community as a vocal anti-corruption advocate – these are important details to know.
A Florida dad and Iraq combat veteran, Josh Huston has been wrongfully charged with attempted murder after shooting and injuring an intruder who had been stealing from the property.
But this is a lot more than a misunderstanding or mutation of Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground laws.
It’s important to note that I testified against a Gaetz staffer just two weeks prior to my husband’s incident because Rebekah Jones was trying to get a restraining order to protect her son from being followed and photographed.
A Gaetz operative was taking unauthorized pictures of Jones’s son and then Gaetz was posting them on social media mocking the boy.
Another staffer informed me that I pissed Gaetz off because of that.
But back to the incident in question.
On November 7, 2022 around 2 a.m., Josh encountered an intruder in our yard on our vacant lot adjacent to our residence which we treat as an extension to our residential yard (and where Josh stores his RV and boat projects along with many valuable items inside of the RVs), and within a few hundred feet from where our teenage sons and I were sleeping).
Josh had fallen asleep as he was sitting watch to deter any more theft that he realized had been occurring for several days – starting after we noticed Myrick Brock Hamilton on home video surveillance walking out of the woods of the backyard of our residence, and onto our adjacent vacant lot.
Josh was abruptly awoken to Hamilton standing just feet away from him, and he immediately grabbed his rifle he normally has with him at night while on the lot, as it is mostly woods and we have seen many large black bears there.
Josh commanded Hamilton to leave the property, and instead of complying, Hamilton got aggressive and wouldn’t leave.
Josh believed Hamilton was under the influence of narcotics based on Hamilton’s erratic behavior.
There was a street lamp a few yards away, which illuminated something metal in Hamilton’s hand.
At that moment, Josh reasonably feared for his life, and with a six foot fence just a few feet behind him preventing him from retreating, he fired at Hamilton’s direction.
Knowing that Hamilton was shot and ran off the property, Josh immediately called 911 and complied with the deputies when they arrived on scene.
Josh spoke minimally, sharing important details like locations and snippets of a timeline of events to assist them in locating Hamilton, but never provided a statement, per his attorney’s advice.
Several hours later, the news reported that Hamilton had been found by bloodhounds in an abandoned house in the woods not too far from our neighborhood.
The wrong Hamilton was being reported as found, after South Santa Rosa News, acting on a news tip, informed Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office they may have mistakenly identified the victim as 44-year-old Jeremiah Hamilton, the agency issued a corrected press release, identifying 46-year-old Myrick Brock Hamilton, Jeremiah’s older brother, as the male who was shot.
Additionally, despite the initial November 7 press release from SRSO also stating “Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Detectives are investigating a shooting that occurred at approximately 4 a.m.,” SRSO Spokeswoman Jillian Durkin has confirmed the incident actually took place at 2 a.m.
As a veteran, Josh’s street address is exempt from public records disclosure; however, it was also included in SRSO’s posting.
Florida Department of Correction’s FCIC public access system showed that Myrick Brock Hamilton was a wanted person at the time of the incident, for failure to appear on a felony charge of petty theft, second or subsequent.
He was in prison from March 15, 2018 until his release May 31, 2021 for charges including but not limited to: multiple counts of grand theft, burglary of an occupied dwelling, trafficking in stolen property, and selling/manufacturing or delivering meth.
“After further investigation and consultation with the State Attorney’s Office, it was determined that Stand Your Ground did not apply, and a warrant was requested for Joshua Huston for Attempted Murder, First-degree Felony,” stated SRSO in the November 7 press release.
What’s important to note is that Josh has had extensive military weapons training, and has been a concealed carry holder for a while.
He never gave a statement to SRSCO, and complied from the moment deputies arrived on scene after he called 911.
In his call, he made it known that he had been attacked and feared for his life (Hamilton was advancing towards him and Josh truly believed his life and his family’s lives were in danger) and did not believe it necessary to repeat that information as he wanted to provide as little as possible until he was able to get an attorney who advised him to not speak further.
During that small window of time, he showed deputies where he was and where Hamilton was, with a handful of comments about how Hamilton had been trespassing and how Hamilton “scared the shit out of him”.
In the arrest report, it’s deliberately written to minimize Josh’s traumatic experience of defending himself, leaving out key details (such as not having a statement from Josh, or that the fence was at his back) and manufactured a narrative that Josh was mad and homicidal and lying in wait to murder Hamilton.
My husband is a marksman and most certainly didn’t shoot to kill, but he will defend himself and his family if the situation calls for it.
And this situation certainly did.
It isn’t unusual for Josh to sleep outside on the lot, as he has done so many times.
He used to have a military cot he laid on, but that was stolen (assumedly by Hamilton).
Josh and I will be the first to admit that we don’t trust law enforcement, and when we’ve called twice about trespassing in the past, nothing was done because as was explained, deputies would have to see the person trespassing.
What really solidified it for us (before the incident) was how SRSCO did absolutely nothing about a voicemail that Rebekah Jones received over the summer, threatening to kill her and her family.
She personally contacted me and couldn’t believe they weren’t doing anything about it.
So Josh brought a small sleeping bag and backpack to lean on which is how he fell asleep.
Josh never had intent to shoot anyone, but is always prepared to protect himself.
He was well within his rights.
When news of Josh’s arrest broke, one of the same social media trolls who stalked Rebekah Jones on social media and engaged in a well documented smear campaign sharing false narratives and biased sources, started targeting my husband and doing the same thing.
This similarly occurred on Twitter with other Rebekah Jones-associated trolls when she mentioned it.
Randi Gonzalez is associated with the leader of DeSantis’s vicious troll army, Christina Pushaw, as Jones has discovered.
On December 1, Romi White of South Santa Rosa News reported the news that Myrick Brock Hamilton left the hospital in Okaloosa county the day before, where he had been in treatment for his injuries.
This had red flags all over it – he not only had an active felony warrant, but he committed another arrestable offense by lying about his identity when Santa Rosa Sheriff’s deputies found him after the shooting.
A tip to Crime Stoppers had him apprehended by the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office later that day.
He was transferred to Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Office, where he was released shortly after he was booked.
White reported his release the next morning.
She is actually doing a lot of digging into not just Josh’s case, but other recent cases that were proven to be mishandled.
White reports that a tipster informed her that Myrick’s mother was telling people that he had been approached by investigators and told that if he testified against Josh, then his warrant would go away – that Myrick was facing up to 3 or 4 years in prison (see texts she provided screen shots of).
If true, this is crazy.
It isn’t unreasonable to wonder how he was able to get released on a ROR bond with that warrant.
Coincidentally, the arresting deputy in the case from which Myrick had an active felony warrant was recently arrested and terminated from his job – the fourth Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Office employee to be arrested this year.
There’s an interesting blog covering some of those shenanigans: Conjuring Justice.
Community members stand with us as they show their concern with how this man has continued to walk free despite his extensive criminal record and history of theft in the local area – which he continued to do even with an active felony warrant (related to theft).
Families who have also been terrorized by this man, as well as being victims of theft of their property, have begun to come forward and share their stories.
We can’t thank them enough for their courage for speaking up.
On January 4, White reported that the state will not prosecute Hamilton for trespassing on our property – which at the minimum, he certainly is guilty of.
Additionally, she reported on the unusual circumstances behind Hamilton’s potential deal made to lie against my husband to have his former charges dropped – she is the only reporter accurately reporting on this case.
Several weeks ago, Hamilton’s mother had been telling people that the offer had been made to drop his former charges and potential new charges from Josh’s case, and this is proving to be true.
Coincidentally, White is simultaneously reporting on Hamilton’s brother who was recently arrested in a fentanyl drug bust.
Here is the Florida Statute that applies to Josh’s Stand Your Ground defense – it does not just apply to inside of your residence:
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| 776.012 Use or threatened use of force in defense of person |
(2) A person is justified in using or threatening to use deadly force if he or she reasonably believes that using or threatening to use such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony. A person who uses or threatens to use deadly force in accordance with this subsection does not have a duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground if the person using or threatening to use the deadly force is not engaged in a criminal activity and is in a place where he or she has a right to be.
An openly politically biased prosecutor (vocal about his negative perception of Democrats) has been assigned to the case.
Because I was one of the campaign managers for Rebekah Jones – the Democratic opponent to Matt Gaetz – it will be discovered if any of this is by design.
The state attorney’s office has reversed its course on bringing the charge for trespassing on our property against Myrick Brock Hamilton, shortly after announcing that it would not seek the charge.
Hamilton was arrested on January 6, booked and quickly released for a trespassing charge, which was verified by White in the South Santa Rosa News as an arrest for trespassing on our property the night he was shot.
He is pleading not guilty to the crime of trespassing despite the massive evidence indicating otherwise.
On January 29, White was reporting on scene at a drug related incident in our community.
This is yet another drug related report out of the same area our perpetrator, Myrick Brock Hamilton, is known to live.
Beginning around the 7:50 minute mark in the report, bystanders who know Hamilton and his brothers are heard saying, “the Hamilton brothers keep trying to kill him (the guy in the car in the video) . . . they busted down his door . . . roughing him up.”
Those two brothers are currently both out on bond for various charges, and are still reported to be terrorizing our community.
There’s a third brother, who was recently arrested with multiple drugs in his possession.
That’s three brothers all arrested within a month, but interestingly enough, Hamilton has yet to be charged for lying about his identity to the sheriff’s deputies when they located him after he was shot.
There is also the theft that has yet to be addressed, as not a single member of law enforcement seemed to care enough to pursue it.
The newest development is that we have discovered that our attorney, Alan Diamond of Funk, Szachacz & Diamond, appointed to us by USCCA, which is our self-defense liability insurance, is known as a Judas lawyer.
Most alarmingly is the political connection and contractual obligation/bias he and his firm have to law enforcement and conservative attorneys and judges to which we need no association as we are dealing with corrupt conservative law enforcement, attorneys and judges already.
I have acquired the following two complaints about him to the Florida Bar from former clients:
Josephus LaFleur FL Bar Complaint: La Fleur died of an accident while in prison with an open investigation by FDLE at a time when he was appealing his conviction and communicating with Dan Biro while in prison.
Daniel Biro FL Bar Complaint
We received a letter from the Florida Bar regarding the complaints and were told Diamond is in good standing despite the complaints about which, Porsche Hill, Administrative Support for the Florida Bar’s Division of Lawyer Regulation wrote:
“The only information about the disciplinary files not available to the public is information about files pending at the initial staff or grievance committee levels of investigation. Because of these limitations, no comment will be made in this letter about the existence of non-public matters. The failure to make any mention should not be viewed as an admission that such files exist.”
We are currently in the process of requesting a new attorney through our self-defense liability insurance, but we fear retaliation.
This is Florida in 2023–where if you don’t agree with the politics of those in charge, you are subject to living in fear.
We have created a fundraiser and website with updated information on our case:
https://www.givesendgo.com/standyourground
–Tiffany Huston
Tiffany and Josh Huston are Air Force veterans who live in Northwest Florida with their two sons. Vocal anti-corruption advocates, they fight for justice– injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. In a clear case of “Stand Your Ground” defense, Josh Huston is being persecuted for his advocacy against corruption in his community.