A woman locked herself inside her car on the 11100 block of Royal Palm Boulevard to escape a man police say was smashing her driver's-side door and window with a metal scooter. When officers arrived, they say the same man, identified as 36-year-old Miami resident Junior Bastien, bit and spit on them during a violent struggle to get him into a patrol vehicle.
Coral Springs police responded to the scene last Tuesday, August 18, after receiving a report of a domestic disturbance, according to Coral Springs Talk. The woman had asked others to call 911 while she remained inside her vehicle, and her mother contacted authorities after the woman asked her to. She stayed locked inside because she feared Bastien would break the window and harm her, and she recorded the confrontation as evidence, the outlet reported.
A responding officer witnessed Bastien using the scooter as a weapon to strike the vehicle, per police accounts relayed by the outlet. Bastien is accused of striking the driver's-side door and window with the scooter before he complied with commands to drop it. Officers then placed him in handcuffs, but the outlet's report indicates the encounter escalated from there.
Struggle Turns Violent During Arrest
Bastien refused multiple commands to enter a patrol vehicle and resisted officers' efforts to place him inside it, according to the report. At one point he hooked his feet beneath the patrol vehicle's undercarriage, making it harder for officers to move him. During the struggle to restrain him, he is accused of biting another officer and spitting on a police officer as well.
Bastien was ultimately arrested and transported to the Broward County Main Jail, though he was also taken to a Broward Health facility, per the same account. The specific charges filed in connection with last week's arrest were not detailed in available reporting.
A Documented History With Similar Allegations
This is not the first time Bastien has faced accusations of this nature. He was previously booked into the Broward County Main Jail on December 5, 2025, on multiple charges including aggravated battery on an officer, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and resisting an officer with violence, following an arrest by Davie Police, according to a booking record posted on Facebook. He was held on $0 bail across eight counts during that earlier booking, the record shows.
Florida law imposes steep penalties for offenses against police officers. Under Florida Statute § 784.07, battery against a law enforcement officer is elevated from a misdemeanor to a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in state prison, five years of probation, and a $5,000 fine, and the statute covers police officers, firefighters, and emergency medical personnel performing official duties. Separately, Florida Statute § 843.01 classifies resisting an officer with violence as its own third-degree felony carrying the same maximum five-year sentence and $5,000 fine, though prosecutors must establish that officers were lawfully performing their duties when force was used.
The scooter allegation could also carry weight under aggravated assault law. Florida Statute § 784.021 makes aggravated assault with a deadly weapon a third-degree felony carrying up to five years in prison, and state courts have held that non-traditional objects — including vehicles or metal scooters — can qualify as deadly weapons depending on how they are used, according to legal analysis published by Stout Defense. Simple assault requires only an unlawful threat coupled with an apparent ability to carry it out that instills fear of imminent violence, but striking an occupied vehicle with a weapon while someone is trapped inside supports the more serious charge.
Part of a Broader Regional Pattern
The incident lands amid a documented rise in domestic violence reports across Broward County. The county logged 2,626 reported domestic violence cases in 2023, marking a 29% increase in the county's per-capita domestic violence rate between 2020 and 2023, according to a countywide status report from the FIU Metropolitan Center. Advocacy group Women in Distress separately reported in April 2025 that domestic violence incidents rose 23% in Broward County while domestic violence-related deaths statewide climbed 66%, the group told CBS News.
Statewide, certified domestic violence shelters provided 624,269 nights of emergency shelter to 12,425 survivors and children during the 2024–2025 fiscal year, according to the Florida Partnership to End Domestic Violence, with emergency housing standing out as the most requested service in a statewide count.
The alleged use of a scooter as a weapon also lands in a city that has spent months focused on motorized-device safety for entirely different reasons. Coral Springs updated its municipal code with Ordinance 2025-111, which permits motorized scooters on sidewalks and bike paths but caps their speed at 15 mph generally and 5 mph within 25 feet of pedestrians, as Hoodline previously reported. Between September 2025 and February 2026, Coral Springs police responded to 46 crashes and safety incidents involving e-bikes, e-motos, and scooters, prompting the department to compile bodycam footage into public safety announcements.
Violent crime of this kind remains rare in Coral Springs, which recorded zero homicides in 2025 and typically maintains significantly lower violent crime rates than neighboring South Florida communities, Hoodline has noted in its coverage of a rare fatal shooting on Riverside Drive earlier this year. That backdrop makes the alleged scooter attack and assaults on officers described in this case unusual outliers for the city.
