The man accused of selling drugs to the adult son of the Democratic nominee in the upcoming Alachua County sheriff election suffered a mysterious head injury when deputies arrested him hours after the candidate’s son was found fatally overdosed.
The conflicting versions of events that led to the bleeding gash on the forehead of Jose “Albey” Alberto Coronel, 46, cannot be reconciled through reviews of public court documents or law enforcement videos from that night. Interviews with sheriff’s officials and Coronel himself, who remains behind bars, also yield conflicting explanations.
The case involves the August 2023 death of Chad Scott Jr., the grown son of Chad D. Scott, who at the time of his son’s death was a top official in the sheriff’s office. Coronel ran a graphics design studio downtown and was a producer at Gainesville Fashion Week at the height of its popularity.
Scott Sr. won the Democratic primary for sheriff this summer and faces GOP incumbent Emery Gainey in the general election next month. Gainey was appointed to the job in September 2023. There hasn’t been a Republican elected sheriff in Alachua County – one of Florida’s most reliably Democratic strongholds – in two decades.
The sheriff’s employees who arrested Coronel that night, less than five hours after Chad Scott Jr. was found dead, weren’t wearing body cameras because two of the arresting officers are undercover detectives and the third works in a narcotics unit, the sheriff’s office said.
Video from a sheriff’s cruiser’s dashboard camera at the scene – obtained under Florida’s public records law – showed Coronel’s forehead smeared with blood after he was already in handcuffs, leaning over the hood of the SUV as deputies searched him. Court records said deputies found a small bag of methamphetamine in his pocket.
Video from inside the same cruiser showed someone out of frame later wrapping a gauze bandage around Coronel’s forehead, which had a bloody gash extending from his hairline nearly to his left ear.
“I’m going to look at you real quick,” a male voice told Coronel. Coronel winced as the bandage was applied. After his blood pressure was checked, he answered that he didn’t know whether a nearby pool of blood in the cruiser came from his head wound or a different bloody scratch on one of his knees. A few minutes later, he lay on his back and groaned in pain. He then appeared to fall asleep for about 20 minutes as he was driven to the jail.
The sheriff’s office said it can’t publicly disclose its internal incident reports of the matter, including its employees’ explanations for how the injury was sustained, because of the pending drug case.
Coronel’s arrest affidavit, which was filed publicly in circuit court as a part of the prosecutor’s case, said that on the night of the arrest, there was nothing out of the ordinary: Coronel “came outside when we arrived, and was taken into custody.”
Coronel, who is facing nine felony drug charges, was not accused in the report of resisting arrest and there were no references to any scuffle that night. The arrest report made no reference to Coronel’s injury. The head wound was visible on his jail booking photo.
In a phone call from the jail, Coronel said sheriff’s officials had slammed open the door of his home when they arrived to arrest him, striking Coronel as it opened and causing him to fall and hit his head. He has been in jail more than 13 months awaiting trial because he is unable to pay his $730,000 bail.
“It happened so quick,” Coronel said. “I was confused.”
Sheriff’s investigators said they used the number in Chad Scott Jr.’s phone to identify Coronel as the person listed as Jose Untethered. They believed him to be Chad Scott Jr.’s drug dealer based on messages over WhatsApp. The investigators said Chad Scott Sr. and his ex-wife, Miquisha Scott, gave them permission to search their dead son’s phone.
“It was clear Scott was purchasing narcotics from Jose,” the arrest report said. It added, “Jose was the only individual who Scott had any type of narcotics talk with.”
Investigators said they used Chad Scott Jr.’s phone to arrange a narcotics deal with Coronel after they traced the WhatsApp messages to him.
A sheriff’s spokesman, Sgt. Frank Kinsey, said he spoke to Deputy William “Alex” Black, one of the arresting officers, after a reporter asked about the injury. Kinsey said Coronel sustained the head injury when he tried to slam the door on the arresting officers, who pushed back on the door, slamming it back into the man’s forehead.
The arresting officers included Black, Sgt. Eric Hester and Detective Jacob Barlow. Black declined to answer a reporter’s questions about Coronel’s injury. Hester and Barlow also declined to discuss the matter.
Kinsey said the description of Coronel trying to slam the door in the face of his arrest was included in internal, detailed incident reports about the arrest that night. The sheriff’s office said they could not be publicly released, and the State Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request to disclose them.
Kinsey said the arrest report didn’t mention Coronel’s head injury because it wasn’t relevant to the criminal charges he was facing. He did not say why the public arrest report said Coronel came out of his home as deputies arrived, when official reports accused Coronel of trying to slam his door in their faces.
In an interview earlier this summer, Scott Sr. said he has not closely followed the criminal case against Coronel and said his son’s death hasn’t affected his campaign, which cited drug enforcement as one of his priorities. Scott Sr. is listed as a witness for the prosecution in the criminal case against Coronel. He said in an interview he didn’t remember Coronel’s name.
“That’s not going to bring my son back,” Scott Sr. said.
Coronel was scheduled to go to trial in December on the drug charges, but last week his defense lawyer notified the judge, David P. Kreider, that Coronel will change his not guilty plea on Oct. 29, signaling a possible plea deal with prosecutors that could resolve the case before the Nov. 5 election.
The incident last year involving Coronel’s head wound came one month after incumbent Democratic Sheriff Clovis Watson said he was resigning for health reasons and one month before Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Gainey, a Republican, to replace Watson. Scott Sr. was forced to resign in June this year from the sheriff’s office in order to run against Gainey in next month’s general election.
___
This is a breaking news story. Check back for further developments. Contact WUFT News by calling 352-392-6397 or emailing news@wuft.org.