A business owner says online-sale meetups are no longer allowed after a gunman stole a seller’s chain and fired toward the building.
EDGEWATER, Fla. — An Edgewater auto shop says it will no longer host Facebook Marketplace meetups after a robbery outside the business ended with a gunman firing shots toward the building during his escape, according to the seller and the shop owner.
The decision came after a sale arranged online spiraled into a public safety scare for workers and customers near the shop. Seller Nicholas Rumbolo said he brought a one-of-a-kind gold chain to the business for the meetup, only to have the buyer pull a gun, steal the piece and flee. As he ran, Rumbolo said, the man turned and fired several rounds toward the shop. No one was hit, but the close range of the shooting and the damage left behind pushed the business to change how it handles informal transactions on its property.
Rumbolo said he had expected a routine exchange for the chain, which he valued at $4,500. Instead, he said, the suspect drew a handgun from his waistband and pointed it first at an employee and then at him. Rumbolo told WESH that he shouted for one of the workers, identified as Jon in his account, to move away as the suspect backed off. He said the man then ran past the employee while still aiming the gun. According to Rumbolo, the suspect reached a point roughly 20 yards from the building before pivoting and firing multiple rounds. The shooting happened outside Jonathan Chapdelaine Automotive, just off Hibiscus Drive in Edgewater. The report said surveillance video captured the encounter, including the suspect’s flight, giving investigators at least one visual record of how the robbery unfolded from the shop frontage into the lot outside.
Jonathan Chapdelaine, who owns the shop, said the business is back open and operating, but the experience changed how he views third-party sales taking place on his property. The building, workers and bystanders became part of the danger once the robbery shifted into a shooting. Rumbolo said bullets hit the structure and ricocheted close to him, with one passing near his waist and another near head level. The account turned a brief exchange over jewelry into a near-miss for people who had no financial stake in the deal itself. That is what appears to have driven the shop’s decision to stop allowing Marketplace meetups there. Chapdelaine’s response was practical rather than dramatic: resume work, keep the doors open, but remove the condition that helped place the business in the middle of a private sale gone wrong.
The larger effect of the case reaches beyond the theft of a single piece of jewelry. In many communities, business parking lots and storefronts become informal meeting points for online buyers and sellers because they seem visible and populated. This incident showed that visibility alone may not stop a determined robber. Rumbolo said the suspect knew he was being recorded, yet still aimed the gun, stole the chain and fired as he left. The stolen item also carries unusual value because it was described as one of a kind, making it more recognizable than standard jewelry if it surfaces later. Rumbolo said he believes it could appear at a pawn shop and said he would buy it back if necessary. What remains unknown is whether the suspect targeted the chain in advance, used a false identity to arrange the meeting or acted alone. Police had not publicly released a description of the suspect in the reporting available Thursday.
The investigation now appears to hinge on the same elements that often shape crimes connected to digital marketplaces: message history, meetup planning, witness recollections and video. Detectives are likely to examine communications tied to the sale, the route the suspect used to leave the scene and whether the gunfire left ballistic evidence that can be tested. If the case develops, investigators may also ask pawn brokers and secondhand dealers to watch for the chain because its uniqueness could make it easier to identify than a mass-produced item. Any future court case would depend on matching the online contact, surveillance images and physical evidence to a specific person. Until then, the legal posture remains early. No arrest had been announced in the report, no suspect name had been released and no public court date had been identified. The next formal step would be an arrest affidavit, charge filing or public release from police.
For the people who were there, the lasting memory may be how ordinary the setting looked before the shots were fired. It was an auto shop on a workday, with employees moving through their usual routines and a seller expecting a straightforward transaction. Then the focus shifted from commerce to survival. Rumbolo said he chose not to chase the thief because getting back to his wife and children mattered more than recovering the jewelry. That statement gave the episode its human center. The robbery cost him a chain worth thousands of dollars, but the larger cost could have been much worse if even one shot had landed a few inches differently. The shop owner’s policy change, in that sense, was less about business inconvenience than about drawing a line after a close call that workers will remember long after the damage is repaired.
By Friday, the shop had returned to normal operations, but the robbery remained unsolved and the chain was still missing. The next key development will be whether investigators release images, identify the gunman or trace the stolen jewelry through resale channels.
Author note: Last updated April 10, 2026.