When Pasco County, Fla., deputies found Robert Greiner early Friday, he was sleeping in a bed.
“Time to wake up Robert,” one deputy shouted.
Even with all the yelling and the flashlights in his face, Greiner wanted to stay under the covers.
“Your sister’s a little upset,” a deputy told him.
“Shut up,” he said.
“Let’s go. You aren’t going to tell us to shut up,” a deputy replied.
But as shown in video from a deputy’s body camera, things took a violent turn.
Greiner, without a stitch of clothes on, jumped out of bed and fought deputies.
“They try to wake him up, but when they do, I think he’s still intoxicated or under the influence of a chemical substance. And then he starts fighting our deputies. This shows our citizens once again how dangerous the law enforcement profession is,” Sheriff Chris Nocco said.
The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office tracked down Greiner after investigating a crash less than a mile away on Little Road and State Road 52 in Port Richey.
They said he stole his sister’s Jeep, then got into a wrong-way crash, hitting a car head on.
Investigators said Grenier took off from the scene, but it wasn’t hard to find him.
Deputies followed a trail of fluid from the crash scene, right to the garage, where they found the wrecked red Jeep.
They later found the suspect passed out.
After a brief struggle, deputies put Greiner in handcuffs, got him a pair of pants and took him to jail.
“You take a video such as this, if this guy even decides to go to court, this is great evidence so that a jury can look at this and realize the attack on a law enforcement officer that he did,” said Nocco.
Greiner is charged with battery on a law enforcement officer, auto theft, driving on permanently revoked license, and hit and run.
