Detectives with the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office arrested a St. Augustine man Thursday on an attempted murder charge after they said he pointed, and tried to fire, a homemade gun at a sheriff’s deputy during a brief pursuit earlier in the week.

Brad Timothy Germain was already in jail Thursday for a probation violation arrest when detectives served a warrant for charges of attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, possession of a firearm or ammunition by a felon, and resisting arrest, the Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.

It was that probation arrest on Tuesday that led to the additional charges.

According to the release, when a deputy arrived at Germain’s home in the area of Kings Estate Road to arrest him, someone at the home said Germain, 41, had fled to a wooded area behind the home.

Sheriff’s Office spokesman Chuck Mulligan said the deputy made contact with Germain at that woodline.

“There was kind of a standoff so to speak,” he said.

Mulligan said it was dark at the time, but the deputy could see that Germain had an object that looked like a piece of pipe that he “lunged” toward the deputy’s chest.

“At that point [the deputy] pulled his taser and tased him,” Mulligan said.

“He had no indication at the time of this event that it was anything but a piece of pipe in his hand,” he added.

Once Germain was handcuffed, deputies searched him and found a 12-gauge shotgun shell in his pocket.

“The deputies also located a metal pipe, with a homemade device attached to the end of the pipe,” the release said.

That was the same device that the deputy said Germain had pointed once at his chest and later at his face.

“When deputies secured the pipe and inspected it, they found that pipe was in fact, a homemade 12 gauge shotgun, containing a shell which had at least one ‘strike mark’ on the primer of the shell, indicated it had been initiated to fire,” the release said.

The discovery prompted a two-day investigation by Major Crimes detectives that led to Germain’s arrest.

Information released Thursday by the Sheriff’s Office indicates that Germain became “combative” while he was being taken to a patrol car during that initial arrest and attempted to break free. One deputy sustained a hand injury that had to be treated at Flagler Hospital as a result of that struggle, the release said.

Court records and arrest documents provided by the Sheriff’s Office show that Germain has been arrested several times since 2000.

Those included a 2010 arrest for battery on a law enforcement officer and other charges. He pleaded no contest to that charge and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

In 2012, he was arrested for aggravated fleeing and eluding and aggravated battery on a law enforcement after a car chase that ended in him ramming a Sheriff’s Office patrol car.

He pleaded no contest to those and other charges the following year and was sentenced to seven years in prison with credit given for time served.