Weekly Crime Reports: Aug. 2-8, 2010

The following incident and arrest information was compiled using official documents, reports and affidavits obtained from government and law enforcement agencies. This feature is not inclusive. It is a sampling of reported incidents in the Flagler County area. Note: The U.S. legal system provides the presumption of innocence to those charged with a crime until guilt is proven in a court of law.

The previous report is available here.

A 6 Year Old Burned by a Combusting Grill

At 7:30 the evening of Aug. 6, a deputy responded to Florida Hospital Flagler in reference to a 6-year-old child who had serious burns on his body. The child was in the emergency room with second and third degree burns on his face and on chest and arms.

The family lives on Wood Fair Lane in Palm Coast.

The child’s father told the deputy that he was inside his house, cooking on a small clay grill fueled by rubbing alcohol. The father said he picked it up and took it outside because the grill had started to smoke up the house. The child, the father said, followed him outside, then walked in front of him when he set the grill down and leaned over to look at it. The father says he doesn’t know how it happened, but that when he set the grill down, it burst into flames, igniting the shirt the child was wearing.

The father took the shirt off, then he and his wife rubbed aloe on the burns and drove the child to the hospital for treatment. The child was taken by helicopter to Shands Hospital in Gainesville. Photographs were taken of the child’s injuries and the grill was placed into records. The Department of Children and Families was also contacted.

Burglary at the Madison Green Apartments

Just before 10 p.m. on Aug. 6, a deputy was dispatched to the Madison Green Apartments in Palm Coast to investigate a reported burglary. “As I arrived on scene I observed a white male with brown hair walking in front of my marked patrol vehicle,” the deputy who filed the police report wrote. A woman told the deputy: “That’s the one you’re looking for. That is the guy that was just breaking into my van!”

The white male was Eric Fields of Butternut Drive in Palm Coast. Fields looked at the deputy, who ordered him to stop.  Fields ran behind building 500 of the apartment complex. The deputy chased him—and heard the woman who’d pointed out Fields say that Fields had a gun. “I immediately called for back-up officers to respond to my location and we set up a perimeter,” the deputy reported. A police dog was also deployed.

It was just past midnight when Fields “came out of the woods” and was placed under arrest.

Items Fields allegedly stole include a GPS system, a camera, several cell phones, several bottles of cologne, and other miscellaneous items listed. Some items the woman who’d identified Fields had also identified as her own were returned to her.

Big TV and Other Items Robbed from Riviera Estates Drive Vacation Home

At 10:35 the morning of Aug. 6, a deputy responded to Melissa Caballero at a home on Riviera Estates Drive owned by Caballero’s mother, Denise Mongillo, as a vacation home. The home is located in such a way that no other homes are visible from it. Caballero and her mother are Connecticut residents. Caballero was visiting Palm Coast. Caballero said that sometime between 6 p.m. on Aug 5 and the morning of Aug. 6, someone broke into her mother’s home by kicking in the front door.

The following items were reported stolen: a 60” black Panasonic LCD television valued at $4,000, a Bose

entertainment system that hadn’t been taken out of its box, and a DVD player. The Panasonic television was stolen from a wall-mounted device located in the living room, the Bose entertainment system from the garage and the DVD player from the master bedroom.

In the master bedroom, it appeared that the suspected robbers tried to pry out a television mounted on the wall in the corner of the bedroom. They were not successful. A palm print and finger print with

detailed ridge lines on the left side of the television were successfully lifted from the television.

Larceny at a Cyber Café on Utility Drive

On Aug. 6 a deputy was dispatched to the cyber café at 1 Florida Park Drive, Unit 107. There, Cynthia Howard reported that when she arrived at work at 9:30 a.m., she found the front door unlocked. She went in and went about her morning routine. At about 9:45 a.m., she went to the rear of the business, and realized that $370.00 was missing. It had been in a blue bag there. Howard called the business’ owner unsuccessfully. She called other employees who have a key to the business. One of them, identified as L.

Wittmer, told Howard that he’d closed up the night before and left at about 11 p.m., leaving the money in its proper place.

Fraudulent Purchases at Toys ‘R Us—for Baby Monitors

The morning of Aug. 6, a resident of Bunnell reported to a deputy at the Flagler County Sheriff’s office that two transactions at Toys ‘R Us had been run through his bank account—transactions he hadn’t made. One transaction was for $82.07, the other for $80.75, both within ten minutes of each other. The resident contacted the toy store to report the fraud and was told the purchases were for baby monitors, which were shipped to addresses in South Carolina and in New York. The resident’s bank told him that he would be reimbursed.

Smashed Car Window at Palm Harbor Parkway

Sometime during the night of Aug. 5 to Aug. 6, someone smashed the passenger side window of a 1993 white Chevrolet Caprice station wagon that had been parked at Palm Harbor Parkway. The window was smashed with a piece of concrete. It appeared that the suspect, or suspects, went inside the station wagon, rummaged through the glove compartment and a locked compartment in the rear-passenger side of the car. There was nothing in the car that could be taken, the car’s owner said.

Stolen GPS at Palm Harbor

Also during the night of Aug. 5 to Aug. 6, a man at the Palm Harbor Parkway units reported to police that someone had gone inside his 2006 Toyota Scion, which was unlocked, and stole a GPS unit valued at $300. The man said he had been visiting with friends around midnight and heard people partying around the bridge.