TAVARES, Fla.—A DeLand man was nabbed Thursday morning driving a stolen City of Tavares truck, following a break-in at the city’s Public Works Complex.
According to a Tavares Police Department report, TPD responded to the Public Works Complex, 920 Captain Haynes Road after an employee reported that when he arrived shortly after 5:45 a.m. Thursday, he found Lake Technical College’s doors open, and two vehicles and a building had been broken into.
Officers obtained surveillance video that showed Ronald Carlton Harmon, 43, just before 11:30 p.m. Wednesday night on the complex property. More than an hour later, he is seen on video again, this time using a white skid steer to force open a roll-up door, causing $40,000 in damage to the door. He is also seen walking through several hallways in the building.
While investigating, another employee told officers the front door lock of the Utilities Administration Building had been removed and the door was damaged, and another door was found shattered; the estimated total damage to the complex is nearly $60,000. Various items in the building were moved, a pry bar was found on a kitchen table, along with a hammer on the kitchen counter. Multiple sets of keys were missing from offices, and some of them were strewn about the building, the report states.
A third employee reported his office had been ransacked and he was missing a City of Tavares shirt and hat, and a City of Tavares truck was missing. The truck, a 2015 Ford 250 Super Duty 4×2, was entered as stolen, while officers collected the shirt Harmon was wearing on video, a pack of cigarettes, a lighter and two V8 drinks. The keys that belonged to the stolen truck were taken from an office, they were not in the truck, TPD PIO Courtney Sullivan told Inside Lake.
While still on scene investigating, a call came in regarding a vehicle driving erratically in the area of Burleigh Boulevard and Duncan Drive around 9:20 a.m. Officers responded to the area and confirmed it was the city’s truck. The truck traveled southbound down U.S. Highway 441 through Tavares and Eustis and was pulled over in Mount Dora near East Crooked Lake Drive with the assistance of Mount Dora Police Department and Eustis Police Department. Harmon was driving the truck and taken into custody. He was arrested for grand theft auto, criminal mischief more than $1000, two counts of burglary and driving while license suspended. He was transported to the Lake County Jail, where he is being held on $57,500 bond.
