Good Guy with a Gun #58: North Redington Beach, FL
Original incident: December 27, 2023. A vagrant who liked to smash windows shattered his way into an elderly couple’s house and assaulted a 74-year-old woman. Her 76-year-old husband stopped him.
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Robert Jackson was a 51-year-old vagrant in Pinellas County, Florida. In 2021, he had been panhandling at a Circle K while a man was filling up his car, and when the man refused to give him money, he struck a flame on his lighter and threatened to “light up” the victim. That landed him two years in prison; he had just been let out in November of 2023.
And so it was that Jackson found himself in a beautiful section of North Redington Beach at around 3 AM on a Wednesday morning. The area is just west of St. Petersburg, and it sits on a narrow sweep of land that extends into the water so that there are beachfront homes on both sides of the street.
The location of the incident in Florida. Screenshot: Google Maps.
A close-up of the incident area. The Tides Beach Club and Condos is on the lower-left segment of the path; the home he invaded is at the red point in the upper-middle of the screen. Screenshot: Google Maps.
There, Jackson hurled a metal garbage can through the glass front door of the Tides Beach Club and Condos. He entered through the shattered door, rode the elevator to the third floor, and then exited the building using the stairs. He left blood and fingerprints at the scene.
As he shifted onto a cross street, people heard him yelling and called the police.
Deputies made their way to the scene, but couldn’t get there in time to stop his next move.
Jackson threw a rock through a pane of glass by the front door of a house and entered it. 74-year-old Sherry Treadwell had been asleep on the couch, but as she came to she saw Jackson “barreling toward her” (Fox 13’s words). She cried out for her 76-year-old husband, John1, who came running with his firearm. He shot Jackson once in the right shoulder, and Jackson bolted.
He still wasn’t quite done. He tried to break into another house, throwing a rock at its window — but this window was designed to be hurricane-proof, so it didn’t shatter.
Finally, he gave up. “I see him going up the street in pain screaming and yelling and finally the police showed up,” neighbor John Paul McCarthy told News Channel 8.
He added, “We’ve lived on this street since 1969, and this is a first for commotion on the street.”
Jackson was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, and then arrested and charged with burglary of an occupied dwelling, battery on a person 65 years of age or older, and criminal mischief. By February of 2024, he had been connected to the Tides Beach Club invasion and hit with an additional charge of criminal mischief.
Finally, after changing his plea to guilty and coming to an agreement with the court, Jackson was sentenced to twenty years on May 13, 2025.
Sources
No single news source gives everything that’s in this summary. All of the news articles were close to contemporaneous to the event, so none of them contained information about the Tides Beach Club incident or Jackson’s sentence for that night’s crimes. Several news outlets interviewed the neighbor, John Paul McCarthy, or perhaps used pooled footage. Only one source, the Tampa Bay Times, noted Jackson’s prior criminal history and the fact that he was released from prison in November.
The Pinellas County Clerk has an excellent website where you can search for public records. Searching for Jackson, Robert, DOB 09/08/1972 brings up all of the records associated with this incident and his prior arrests in the area.
The original police report is here.
Fox 13 did a very good job with this story, getting the footage from McCarthy and humanizing the event. They also dedicated over two and a half minutes of airtime to it.
WFLA 8 also did a very good job and gave the story two minutes of airtime.
WTSP 10 just summarized the police report, but they did at least give the story 37 seconds on the air.
Bay News 9 gave a pretty bare-bones story. Their video is behind a paywall, so I didn’t watch it.
The Tampa Bay Times basically summarized the police report, but they also did the legwork to find Jackson’s priors and his prison release date, along with the 2021 booking photo, all of which I appreciated.
The Miami Herald, IONTB.com, and The Gabber just summarized the police report.
Blaze Media summarized the story, primarily using the WFLA report as a source.
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John was called “Randy” by a neighbor during an interview with Fox 13.