Law&Crime Sidebar - Florida 'Karen' Nabbed for Chasing Down Teen Riding a Bike: Cops

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

Julia Kalthof, 65, was arrested earlier this month on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and reckless driving after she allegedly chased a teenager riding an e-bike on a local bike path. She claimed he was driving too fast and she wanted to follow him home to let his parents know. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber had a chance to talk to the teen’s parents, Adam and Christina Ellis, about how the teen is doing now and the police response to the incident.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If you or a loved one have suffered physical or mental health issues due to video games, visit https://vgclaims.com/sidebar to answer less than 10 questions and check your eligibility to file a claim!HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. There's this lady trying to hit me. And he said, Mom, Mom, this crazy lady just tried to run me over. And I was like, what are you talking about? A Florida woman is accused of chasing a teenager riding an e-bike, even tailed him on a bike path as he tried to get away. We have her questionable excuse for her alleged actions

and witness video that may prove the whole thing. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Hey everybody, this is another law and crime legal alert. So recent allegations against the multi-billion dollar video game industry claim that video games are engineered for addiction. Yeah, so the claims include trying to make sense of the hold that video games seem to have over people where they just can't put the controller

down. Every wind triggers that hit of dopamine and that creates a cycle of compulsion that disrupts daily life and it harms mental health. But our legal sponsors are taking on the industry that has allegedly at many times put profit over safety and they're working to potentially get compensation for all of those impacted. So if you were a loved one have suffered physical or mental health issues due to video games, then visit vG claims.com slash sidebar to answer less than 10 questions and check your eligibility to file a claim. So school's out, and 14-year-old Gage was doing what a lot of kids do over summer vacation. He was riding his bike near his neighborhood in Palm Coast, Florida.

He was apparently cruising along the Pine Lakes bike and walking path next to the road when he realized something was very wrong. There's this lady trying to hit me. That's right. A woman in an SUV had apparently driven onto the bike path and was following him. Now, another video filmed by a witness shows both Gage and the driver of the SUV flying across crosswalks, and at times she gets dangerously close to him. A man later told police that he saw Gage waving his arms, trying to get somebody to help him. So this man's girlfriend wasn't very far behind him, driving a separate car, so he told her

to start recording on her phone. And at one point, she points the camera at her odometer as she's alongside them, showing that they're going around 20 miles an hour. And that is when her boyfriend uses his car to essentially block the SUV and let Gage get away. Now, he also reached out to dispatchers to let them know what was going on. Deputies, they responded, they talked to the witnesses. but Gage and the suspect had already left the scene.

Fortunately, the witness video picked up the SUV's license plate and deputies tracked down their suspect's 65-year-old Julia Kalthoff, but they weren't sure who the teenager was since he'd raced away. Flagler County Sheriff's Office said that Gage's parents got in touch with them about what happened. And according to a release from the sheriff's office, Kaltov told deputies that the incident occurred because she was angry at the victim for riding his e-bike too fast and wanted to find out where he lived

in order to speak to his parents. But according to Gage, Kaltov had screamed at him, chased him, tried to force him off the path. So a few days after the incident happened on June 10th, deputies arrested Kaltov, charged her with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill and reckless driving. She was also issued a traffic citation for driving along the multi-use path. And in a statement, Sheriff Rick Staley said,

this woman caused a dangerous situation with her reckless and aggressive behavior and could have seriously hurt or killed not just the child she was chasing, but anyone who happened to be walking or biking on that path. I'm thankful that nobody was hurt or she could be facing even more serious charges. I also want to thank the bystander who stopped a dangerous situation and called 911 so that our deputies could handle it, conduct their investigation, and arrest this driver who clearly needs anger management. Now, according to Florida law, e-bikes have to follow basically the same rules as regular bicycles.

They can be ridden on streets, highway, shoulders, bike lanes, and multi-use paths. So that's something that might factor into this case. And as far as the suspect, she was released on a $3,000 bond. Her arraignment is scheduled for July 22nd in Flagler County Court. Here's the thing. I had the opportunity to actually catch up with the teen's parents, Adam and Krista Ellis, to find out how their son is doing and what they hope happens next. Take a listen.

Adam, Christina, thank you so much for taking the time. It's great to meet both of you. I can imagine this is a very strange and tough time. How is your son doing? How are you guys doing with everything that's been going on, including the fact that this is made essentially national headlines? It's a shell shock. Gage is doing great. He still has yet to ride his e-bike.

And that's with good measure. I think when he decides he wants to ride it, I think we're going to go out with him on ours, take him through the neighborhood, just, like I said, just make sure that everything is kosher, nothing, you know, no target, you know, nothing weird happens until he gets his confidence build back up. And Christine, I mean, did he ever have problems like this before? Did you ever say, hey, I don't like the way you're writing it? Um, anything like that before this incident happened? No, he has not. Um, he has not personally, but he's had to, friends that have been run off the road. He's had friends that's come in close

coincidences, but for him in particular, no. How did you find out what happened here? Oh, he came home after it happened, and he told me about it. This was Saturday night. And he said, Mom, Mom, this crazy lady just tried to run me over. And I was like, what are you talking about, you know. And my first instinct was to ask him, okay, Gage, you know, what did you do? And he goes, mom, I swear, I didn't do anything. And I said, well, what triggered her? And he said, mom, he said, I was coming out of the neighborhood and he said, I did this for her but one instance to avoid hitting a rock. I said, well, were you close to her? He said, no. He said, she was a good bit, a good bit of a ways down the road. And he said she went down to the end of the road, took a U-turn.

And then I could hear somebody screaming. And he said, I looked beside me, and she was beside me screaming with all of her windows down. And he said, it scared me. And I started speeding up. And I said, okay. And then what? She started following me. And he walked me through the instance.

And then he said, she cut me off trying to get me, or when I was getting on the bot path. and he said I started getting well you know when you pedal the box they do get a little bit faster he says so I started peddling for my life and um he said I started waving people down and he said at that point I started recording too just so I you know have evidence and he's like look um and he said thankfully a witness stopped and cut her off and he said he was on the phone the guy told me that he was calling the cops and um And I said, okay, good. They called the cops.

I said, so, and, you know, I'm like, do I need to call the cops? I was in panic. Do I need to call the cops? And then I tell him, I said, okay, everybody knows your bike. You know, you're the only one in the neighborhood that has it. I said, they'll get the report and they'll follow up with us. And I said, if not, we'll follow up in the morning. And I asked him, I said, what do you want me to do?

Do you want me to call the cops down? He's like, no, no, just, okay. So the next morning, he got it. up and he started telling his dad and Nana about it. And then that's when he was kind of a little bit shaky talking about it. And then my husband's like, well, let's call the cops, follow-ups, if there was a report, see if anything happen. And then it kind of escalated from there. And I want to get into the police response or maybe what you, I believe what you're going to, what you told us before the interview, maybe lack of initial response, which I think is interesting

to talk about. But when you guys saw that video and we all saw that, video. What was your reaction to it? Adam, we'll start with you. The initial reaction was Rage. Like, how can someone, what were that, what was that person thinking? Basically, the initial response was call the police. Let's get the officer out here. And the, when I called 911, the first, or the dispatch number, that's when they said, they pulled the report. They said, oh, you're the guy from, you're the father of the kid from my stunt. I was like, yes, officer en route. And then it kind of went south almost instantly Sunday.

That's when the frustration really kicked it. And I want to get to that. And Christine, when you saw the video, and by the way, your reaction to that, and did you ever get a chance to talk with the person who allegedly cut her off? Not until after she was arrested and the report went viral. in the few times that we talked to the cops or Adam called the police department, they didn't give us any information. They did not give us her name.

They did not give us the witness name, nothing. So we didn't get the witness video until Wednesday or Tuesday not. I think it might have been Tuesday not, Wednesday not. Because he came over and we introduced ourselves and thanked him. And then his girlfriend was with him. and she said, hey, I have the video. Do you want it? She said, I uploaded it to the police department. And I was like, yes, yes, please.

And she showed us the video. And that video, my heart sank. Gages was pretty intense, but looking at Britney's video, just really put it all together. It was like, holy cow. And then the more you watch it, your heart just sinks because not once. but twice she came pretty close to hitting him. I was going to ask you if if someone didn't intervene, what do you think could have happened?

There's a thousand scenarios you could play in that one. I mean, you can, you pick one, you know, because we didn't know, we didn't know the intent. You never know, I mean, like I said, you can name any scenario known to mankind. Because when you're, when a child is being followed on a bike, path. The scenarios are endless. Talk to me about the frustration, the police response. This is, this is when you, when you had sent us notes about this, I was, I was shocked.

So talk to our audience about what police reportedly told you initially and how it developed. Well, the first officer that came out Sunday, he listened to us. He taught the gauge. Gage kept trying to show him the video. He's like, what video? I haven't seen the video. Adam told him he said, look, he said, I'm trying to upload it to dispatch, just like they told me. And he goes, okay, I don't know what to do in the situation.

I've never been in the situation before. Let me go call my supervisor. So it goes to his car. He's out there probably, what, good 10, 15 minutes maybe? And then he comes back and he says, he looks at Gage and ask him, he said, does she put you in harm? And Gage Totem said, yes, bear for my life.

She cut me off twice before I started recording. He said, that's why I started recording. And then he said, well, looking at what the officer wrote last not, she didn't hit you if she wanted to, or if she wanted to cause harm to you or hit you, she could have. So in theory, no crime was done. No law. He said, yes, she broke the law by getting on the bike pathway, but we didn't see it. So we cannot issue a citation. Me and Adam both looked at each other like, what do you mean you didn't see it? Here's a video. There's also a witness that has the video, which we have not seen yet. I said, there was a witness. So you're telling us,

There's nothing you can do. And he said, no, nothing we can do. There's nothing to report, nothing to do. And then you took action yourselves. You went to social media, right? Absolutely. And that was Adam's first initial response in our community page and our W section page is,

tell me this is legal without being illegal. Tell me why cops think that this is okay. And that's where it blew up because everybody's like, how is she, she's chasing a kid. How is this lady not arrested? At that point, that's when a lot of people start attacking the Flackler County Sheriff's Department, asking why. Why is this not illegal? Why is she not arrested?

Tell us how this is okay. The biggest frustration I got out of it was, okay, Sunday, nothing's good and done. I mean, that's how he left us. There's no crime. Nothing happened. And then he said the supervisor on shift Saturday scolded the woman. That was how they left it. We gave her a stern talking to.

And I was like, okay, well, that's, it is what it is. So I called Monday to get the police report from Saturday. They said no report was ever initiated. So there was no report Saturday night, done, not filed. They said the 911 call has been redacted. So there was nothing physically that I could do. It was out of my hands. So that's when I called.

They told the dispatcher told me to call police again Monday and start another report. So Officer K Monday started the same like the spill. There's no crime here. There's nobody's at fault. There's nothing that we can do. It's just one of those things. and that's when the emotions exploded. What do you mean?

What happened? Just like helpless. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So after this response online, what changed? When the second officer came out, what was it? You tell the officer. After the explosion from Monday of the views, the comments being tagged.

Um, Tuesday, uh, multiple officers showed up Tuesday. Um, the sergeant on shift for Tuesday with the same officer for Monday. Hmm. And he told me, he said on behalf of Flagler County Sheriff's Department, we apologize. When did we got the report? Was it Monday? Mondays when we wrote the report. He apologized on behalf of his staff, the deputies and said they handled the miss, this whole

situation was mishandled. Did they admit? Just a moment. Okay. Today, after Adam called the officer back out here and demanded to write a report, you know, again, they started out where they didn't want to do anything. That's when Adam kind of lost it. He said, okay.

He goes, all right, then. That's how you want to play it. You don't want to help us. She didn't do anything wrong. He said, let's see. Let's see how this. And he said, either you can write a report or we're going to court. at that point he threatened to sue and then at that point that's when the officer went back

this officer went to his car spoke to whoever it was and then came back said okay let's write this report and then that's when we wrote up the report and then Tuesday is when that officer and another officer came back and then they apologized to Adam did did they admit that the amount of attention they were getting on social media influenced. No, the Daytona News Sentinel reporter, the timing was perfect because he was here when the deputy showed up. So the timing was perfect. And Frank, he's the one that initially took the story and did a wonderful piece. I couldn't ask for anybody to write a better piece on it. But he was asking for comments. And they just, they shut, of course, you know, they're not

going to talk to a reporter. No, of course not. But my understanding is you've said, and correct me from wrong, public sentiment is kind of turned against you and your son. The, the comments of, oh, this kid's entitled. What was another one? Oh, parenting 101 has failed. It just, They're questioning why he was, well, I can understand both sides because there are a lot of kids on e-bikes that are doing stupid things. There's also a lot of adults on e-bikes that are doing stupid things. And seeing and hearing and witnessing a lot of this is the reason why it took us three years to buy a gauge one of these bikes. You know, for three years, I've told him, no, no, no. And then it got to the point where you could show me, you can be responsible.

You follow up on the driver's, you know, the driver's manual handbook. Look at that. Look at some bike safety. I said, once you do that, we'll talk about getting you an eye. So this kid studied the driver's book for months. We actually lost my godson in October in a motorcycle accident. I'm sorry. Thank you.

I think that just really kind of opened his eyes. to you is, you know, and it was a driver that was at fall. He was in a truck and he didn't see him on the motorcycle, ran him over, you know, and I think Gage hearing that story, going to the funeral, hearing, you know, the, the, the incidences with motorcycles and things, I think he, then that kicked in. This is why mom and dad's taking this so serious. This is why they've hesitated on buying me a bike. You know, Gage has also seen grown men run out in front of me, not stopping at stop signs, not stopping at the crosswalks, running red lots. You know, he's seen my frustration.

He's seen my heart racing pound of the near misses. So I think he's had enough that he realizes what he should and should not be doing on the e-bite. Well, this, by the way, I didn't know that. And I'm so sorry for your loss, but it sounds to me now, this episode has a much different meaning for you guys. It has a much different meaning and understandably son. I'm glad that you've, you know, have responded to the comments that you're getting online. You know, it's disturbing to say the least. But now she's been arrested.

So Julia Kaltoff has been arrested. She has been charged. What do you make of the charges? what are you hoping justice is in this criminal case? Is it for her to be convicted and go to prison? Is it for her to lose her license? What are you hoping justice looks like in this case? My biggest is that this is going to raise awareness.

Don't take the law in your own hands, for one. We as adults and drivers, we need to be more responsible than that, for one. two, I want these kids to see that there, there are crazy people out there. You know, whether you do something or not, you might come in as a situation. What to do, what not to do with it. I'm glad that she was arrested and that she's going to be held accountable. But as far as, you know, I want, I'm not the law. I'm not above the law.

I don't know what kind of charges. I don't, I mean, I don't know what kind of sense. or anything that comes with this. But I just want her to be able to realize, you know, you can't do this. You can't do this to kids because you disagreed with the speed limit that he was doing. Bikes, his bike is a class two. Max speed is 25. And that's really, really pushing it.

On average, he goes 18 to 20. If that, you know, she should have called the law. maybe she should have recorded him. Maybe she should have followed him from a safe distance on the road legally. And then came to the door, hey, you know, I just want to let you know your son is driving way too fast through the neighborhood or whatever it may be. You know, and all of this could have been avoided. You would have been open to having a conversation with her if she had. Absolutely.

So what? And I would be that mom that would not chase them, but follow for me. from a safe distance and then knock on the door. Hey, ma'am, I just won't let you know, you know, your kid ran out in front of me. I'm just looking out for his safety. Can you, you know, talk to him about that? Because luckily, it didn't happen this time, but if he continues this, this may happen. I'm not saying Gates did that, but that would be my approach. Adam, what would you say to her if you had the opportunity to talk to her and understand why she allegedly did what she did?

I would just want to know what that split-second decision was that she decided to be above the law. That would be my understanding. That's what I guess that would give me closure because that was a split second. When you chose to take your car somewhere it's not supposed to be, I just want to see, I would just want to know the thought process that went through. Well, listen, Adam, Christina, the most important thing is your son's okay. Okay, he's okay, physically okay. This is such a distressing situation. When I saw the video, it was shocking to say the least. We'll continue to follow the case, see how it progresses in the legal system. I really appreciate you taking the time, particularly right after something like this happening, you know, to talk a little bit more about it.

And also, you know, I know how difficult this is, but what I didn't realize, how difficult this is in light of your loss. And again, I'm just so sorry for what you and your family have gone. through. But I really, really appreciate it. And you're taking the time also to respond to the people online, set the record straight. So again, you have an open forum as this case progresses. We'd love to talk to you further. And I'm wishing you all the best moving forward. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. And that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Everybody, thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time.

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