Charlotte County deputies shut down Starlite Lane in Port Charlotte on Friday and told residents near the 2700 block to shelter in place during a standoff with a barricaded man. Law enforcement blockades went up on surrounding access roads, and officials advised neighbors to stay indoors while the standoff continued.
According to Gulf Coast News and Weather, the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office urged residents near 2700 Starlite Lane to shelter in place during a standoff between deputies and a barricaded man. Whether anyone was taken into custody and when the shelter-in-place order would be lifted remained unclear Friday evening.
Authorities closed Starlite Lane and set up law enforcement blockades on surrounding access roads while advising residents to remain indoors during the standoff between deputies and a barricaded man, according to the Daily Sun, which noted the alert was issued by the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office as a community warning.
A Street With a Painful History
Friday's lockdown lands on a street that already carries heavy weight for Port Charlotte. The Starlite Lane neighborhood was the site of a high-profile home invasion in September 2019 in which 15-year-old Khyler Edman was killed while protecting his 5-year-old sister, a case in which intruder Ryan Clayton Cole received a death sentence in July 2025, as reported by FOX 13 Tampa Bay. That earlier case involved an intruder running through the Starlite Lane neighborhood before breaking into the home where Edman died.
The 2700 block sits within Port Charlotte's Parkside/Section 33 area in zip code 33952, a residential district made up largely of single-family homes built in the late 1950s and 1960s, per Realtor.com. Port Charlotte itself is an unincorporated community in Charlotte County, patrolled by the Sheriff's Office rather than a municipal police department.
How Charlotte County Issues Emergency Alerts
Charlotte County relies on Alert Charlotte, an automated emergency notification system run with Emergency Management, to send time-sensitive shelter-in-place notices, road closures, and safety warnings to registered residents, according to Charlotte County. The Sheriff's Office is led by Sheriff Bill Prummell.
Part of a Busy Stretch for Local Deputies
Friday's lockdown is the latest in a string of serious incidents that have kept Charlotte County deputies busy in Port Charlotte in recent months. In September, deputies responded to a separate major incident when two individuals were found dead from gunshot wounds inside a residence on Rockwood Street NW, according to NBC2 News. And in July, deputies blocked off Rock Creek Drive between Bayard and Jarvis Streets during a death investigation after two deceased individuals were located inside a residence on Rock Creek Drive — a scene the Sheriff's Office treated as isolated.
Violent crime cases in the county have also been working their way through the courts. In September, a Port Charlotte man was sentenced to 15 years in prison followed by 10 years of probation for a knife-point home invasion and sexual assault committed in Charlotte County the prior September, a case Hoodline previously reported.
Firearm-related incidents have also kept the Sheriff's Office active this fall. In September, authorities arrested a 65-year-old Port Charlotte resident on an out-of-county warrant following a shotgun shooting at a local campground on Riverton Circle that left a victim wounded, with assistance from neighboring Sarasota County. Just days before Friday's Starlite Lane lockdown, deputies arrested a 16-year-old after a gun discharged during a physical altercation at Harold Avenue Regional Park in Port Charlotte.
As of Friday evening, the shelter-in-place order near Starlite Lane remained in effect during the standoff between deputies and a barricaded man.
