Give John Dunlop a cigar. Or a $1,000 reward.
The field technician with the East Flagler Mosquito Control District was on patrol, inspecting a heavily wooded area near Marineland, when at 10 a.m. Monday he discovered the stolen ATV that belongs to the Volusia-Flagler Turtle Patrol. Whoever had stolen the vehicle had burrowed it into brush not far from where it was swiped.
The vehicle is a camouflage-colored Kawasaki Brute Force 750 with a marked Turtle Patrol pine box. The box was not removed.
“We don’t know a lot,” the Turtle Patrol’s Lori Ottlein said. “But the Mosquito Control guy found it today in a ravine and in the woods behind the building. The thieves kept the keys and the iPad.”
The ATV, valued in the range of $13,000, had been kept in a shed behind the building known as the Coastal Policy Center in Marineland. The building is owned by Atlanta developer Jim Jacoby, who allowed nonprofits, including the Turtle Patrol, to use it. The building was vandalized on June 17–not for the first time this year–and the ATV was stolen, along with the iPad the patrol uses to gather and transmit daily data about turtle nests. The ATV was used to patrol the area of beach from Marineland to Summer Haven in St. Johns County.
The Turtle Patrol put out a call for help and for money to replace the ATV, offering a $1,000 reward for information that would lead to its recovery. Dunlop did the patrol one better.
According to a Mosquito Control release, field technicians spend a substantial portion of every workday inspecting and treating mosquito breeding sites on foot, taking them into parts of the county few ever get to see. “We never know what we’ll come upon in the areas we inspect,” Dunlop said. “Usually, it’s something that wants to bite you. This was a nice surprise.”
A native Floridian, Dunlop spent much of his youth playing in the swamps of the Tomoka River. He still prefers to be outdoors, spending his free time with his wife and two boys. In this case, he was on the clock. He contacted the Sheriff’s Office, which asked for the discovery to be kept under wraps at least for a while, though by noon the news had already spread in Marineland, a town where only dolphins can, on occasion, keep secrets.
The Sheriff’s Office confirmed the find Monday evening. “Our Crime Scene Technicians have combed the ATV for evidence, and detectives are actively following up on leads to identify the suspect,” a sheriff’s spokesperson said. The ATV has been returned to the Turtle Patrol. It is still an active and ongoing investigation.
Former County Attorney Al Hadeed had donated $5,000 toward the Patrol’s fund for a new ATV, which the patrol bought over a week ago, also with an anonymous donor’s pledge of $10,000. After suggesting something anatomically unpleasant to the vandals, Hadeed had vowed to appear before a judge to “testify to the damage to the public interest that they wrought, whoever was responsible.” On Monday, he had not lost his verve for a public flogging: “Hope they got those A holes,” he wrote in a text. “Itching to make the victim’s statement to prosecutor or at sentencing.” If the nether-region’s thieves are caught, it is likely a judge would accommodate the attorney’s intentions.
The Mosquito Control’s influence is generally felt more than seen in the community. It rarely gets plaudits for it even though it is chiefly responsible for preventing life in Flagler County from approximating the abominations of a malarial jungle only Joseph Conrad could describe. Dunlop joined the district in 2022.
“This is exactly the outcome that comes from having dedicated people in the field every single day,” Mike Martin, chairman of the three-member East Flagler Mosquito Control District Board of Commissioners, was quoted as saying in the release. “Our technicians know this District inch by inch because inspecting and treating mosquito habitats requires them to cover ground that most people don’t even think about. Without hesitation, John saw something and said something; this is the caliber of our entire staff.”
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