- November 18, 2024
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April 30
Hey, that’s my bike!
6:56 p.m. First block of Birchwood Drive. Larceny.
A deputy was dispatched to a Palm Coast home after a caller said someone stole his bicycle.
The man said he was on his way home that afternoon and passed by Belle Terre Parkway and Bird of Paradise Drive, and noticed a young man in his late teens or early 20s riding a bike that looked a lot — too much — like his own.
The man was on the phone with his wife when he saw it, and he mentioned it to her.
When he got home, he realized his own bike, a beige Panama Jack beach cruiser, was missing. He’d left it sitting unsecured by his front door.
The bike was worth about $250.
The man told deputies he’d seen the youth who was riding it in the past, and thought he might live nearby.
A deputy checked the area but didn’t find the bike. The victim completed a written statement.
Go to jail ... Go directly to jail ... Do not pass go ...
12:40 p.m. First block of Wellstone Drive. False report.
A 60-year-old woman called the Sheriff’s Office and told deputies her nephew stole her car, a 1989 Jaguar.
She said he had lived with her since August, and that she had argued with him the previous night, and asked him to move out.
She said she’d then left her nephew alone in the house, and when she returned, he was gone, along with her Jag.
She’d asked him to return the car, she said, and he had refused. She wanted to pursue criminal charges.
She gave deputies her nephew’s phone number, and a deputy called him.
The nephew said his aunt had argued with him and told him to leave, but that she had said he could take the car for five days while he looked for a place to stay.
But later, he said, she became angry and started yelling at him and sending him text messages threatening to report the car as stolen.
He said she even sent him a text saying she knew he would probably keep all of her text messages so that she would get in trouble if she reported the car stolen.
The nephew took screenshots of those text messages, and sent them to the investigating deputy.
The deputy had the aunt complete a written statement, and advised her before she signed it that filing a false report to law enforcement was a felony, and that she would be arrested if law enforcement officers found her report was false.
She said it wasn’t false, signed it, and completed a stolen vehicle affidavit. The last question on the form asked whether she would submit to a deception test.
She said she would not. The deputy read aloud the bold writing on the form: “I understand the seriousness of giving false felony information to law enforcement and understand that I can be charged under Florida law for doing so.”
The aunt said everything on the form was true, and signed it.
Then the deputy told her he’d spoken to her nephew, and that he had seen the text messages that proved her statement untrue.
The woman placed her hands out in front of her, and said, “Arrest me then, I lied to you.”
The deputy read the woman her Miranda rights.
She then told him she had allowed her nephew to use the car, but later decided to report it stolen and pursue charges against him in order to get back at him.
The deputy arrested her on a charge of filing a false report to law enforcement.