- April 19, 2024
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Flagler County Sheriff’s Office deputies have arrested five Jacksonville teenagers in connection with car break-ins in Palm Coast.
The arrests came after a Lakeside Place woman called the Sheriff’s Office at about 11:20 p.m. July 29 and said she was watching someone rummage through her unlocked car, according to a Sheriff’s Office arrest affidavit. She told the dispatcher that the thief left in a white Dodge Ram.
A deputy saw the truck and tried to catch up to it, but the truck’s driver turned off the truck’s lights, and the deputy lost the truck after it turned onto Brownstone Lane.
Deputies later found the empty truck on Bronson Lane. It had been stolen in St. Johns County.
Hours later, at 3:50 a.m., another woman called the Sheriff’s Office: She saw five young men going from car to car on Bayside Drive, pulling on the car door handles.
This time, deputies arrived and saw the suspected thieves, who ran. Deputes caught two teens hiding in the woods near Bayside Drive, and then brought in a Flagler County Sheriff’s Office police dog, plus Volusia County’s Air One helicopter, and caught two more. The four teens had “unclaimed personal items possibly related to the vehicle burglaries” in their pockets, according to the arrest affidavit.
Deputies found three pair of shoes and a gun on the path the teens ran along. Three of the teens were shoeless when they were caught, according to the affidavit.
Deputies caught the fifth teen after someone called about a suspicious person — who turned out to be the final suspect — at the Kangaroo gas station on Palm Coast Parkway.
One of the young men arrested was a 19-year-old named Jordan Vital. He was charged with grand theft, resisting arrest without violence, and prowling and loitering, and remained at the Flagler County jail on a combined $3,500 bond as of the afternoon of July 31.
The other four teens were underage: a 17-year-old, two 15-year-olds and a 14-year-old. They were charged with grand theft and various misdemeanors. The 17-year-old had the car key for the stolen Dodge Ram.
