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Man Says He Wasn't In Bathroom For Sex, He Was Playing Game On PDA

For the first time, a former Daytona Beach city commissioner talked about his involvement in an all-men sex sting in a Sears bathroom.


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Mike Shallow told a courtroom he wasn't trying to meet men for sex. Instead, he said, he was in the bathroom playing a video game and insists the police version of the incident is all wrong.

Shallow said he was in the bathroom with the door closed when he saw a foot aggressively come under the door. Then he could see people peering through the cracks at him. He said he was scared and ending up taking out his phone to play a game while he waited for the people to leave.

The bathroom inside the Daytona Beach Sears store was a place where men routinely engaged in sexual activity, police said, but in court Wednesday Shallow said he was just there to buy a TV. The one-time city leader was adamant he is innocent of any crime.

"And I told them that did not happen. And they said, 'Well, the two officers observed you masturbating,' and I said, 'That's completely untrue. No, two officers did not,'" Shallow said Wednesday.

Police were the ones who initially made contact with Shallow while he was inside a bathroom stall.

"A foot came underneath the partition, maybe this far on my side of the partition, with the foot pounding on the floor," Shallow said.

Then officers started peering through the cracks of the door. Shallow said they were soliciting him, but he never responded.

"No, I was creeped out. I just withdrew and I sat down on the toilet, kinda hunched down and waited for him to go away," Shallow said.

He said he was too startled to act and eventually found a way to pass the time until he felt safe to leave.

"I took out my PDA and started playing a game on my PDA," he said.

It was right after that Shallow said he was arrested. He talked Wednesday as part of a plan to show he had an expectation of privacy and that police didn't fully understand what they were doing. The judge is expected to take a few days before making a ruling on dismissing the case.

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