Pizza Delivery Leads to SWAT Swarm and Arrest of Man Wanted for Serial Burglaries

Last Updated: 4:17 p.m.

Jaquez Roland, 34. of 11 Service Tree Place in Palm Coast is in jail today, on $429,000 bail, in connection with a series of armed and violent burglaries, including the Microtel and Sharps Liquor burglaries in October, where workers in both cases were cuffed at gunpoint and robbed.

The arrest follows a succession of steps by detectives and breaks in the case that slowly closed the circle on Roland, down to the way he was finally identified, Wednesday evening, by a pizza delivery man, enabling deputies to encircle the home on Service Tree Place and compel Roland to surrender.

Deputies J. Dopp and Carmine Celico went to the house Wednesday at 6 p.m. to serve Roland an arrest warrant. They set up surveillance. A Domino’s Pizza delivery man showed up and delivered a pie to the house. Celico stopped the delivery man as he was leaving. Roland had signed a receipt for the pizza. His signature was on the receipt. Celico showed the delivery man a picture of Roland–a tall, black man with several tattoos, including a teardrop tattoo. That was him, the delivery man told the cops.

Several additional deputies arrived at the scene, some going to the front door, some to the back. Deputies rang the door bell, identifying themselves. Dopp saw a black man he identified as Roland through the window. Roland turned off lights and disappear in the house. Moments later a woman came to the front door but refused to open it, and said the cops were scaring her children.

The SWAT team was called in. It arrived at 8:31 p.m. Within moments of their arrival, a man approached the house, claiming to be Roland’s brother. The man called Roland on his cell phone, and convinced him to come out. Roland, a native of Brooklyn, came out with his hands on his head and read his rights in the driveway.

“This man was armed and went on his own crime spree. Our investigation was thorough and we have built a strong case against this man who needs to be off the streets permanently,” Flagler County Sheriff Don Fleming said.

The three burglaries Roland is being charged with took place between Oct. 17 and Oct. 31, each time leaving clues behind that worked toward his arrest. On the 17th, he robbed a Microtel employee at gunpoint. Roland was allegedly tampering with the hotel’s safe–the desk clerk was in the laundry room when Roland first appeared–when the cler interrupted him. Roland allegedly grabbed the clerk by the arm, pulled him toward him and held a gun to him saying, “This is a stick-up. Don’t look at me or I’ll kill you.” When he noticed a surveillance camera in the room, he turned it aside and ordered the clerk to pull out the recording CD. Then Roland tied the victim’s hands behind his back, according to a police report, took his wallet and driver’s license, and told the clerk that, now that he knew where he lived, he’d come back from Jacksonville and kill him if he told anything to the police. Other cameras caught the action, which included Roland tying the clerk’s hands behind his back with a one-inch black zip-tie.

The zip tie was similar to one used to tie a victim’s hands at Sharp’s Liquors two weeks later. In that incident, the suspect had grabbed the store clerk’s hair and pushed her to the stock room after taking $250 from the register and $700 in money bags from the safe. As the victim screamed for help, he zip-tied her wrists and legs. There, too, the suspect said he’d come back from Jacksonville to harm the victim if she spoke. The incident, which took place a little after 10 a.m., was caught on a surveillance system. Less than an hour later the same morning, a store manager at Burger King reported to deputies that a black man with many tattoos demanded one of the employees’ money, as that employee was cleaning the bathroom. The man had also earlier asked to use the phone, which deputies later traced to the line at the 11 Service Tree Place house. Earlier at Burger King, the man had asked for a particular employee, who wasn’t there at the time. When deputies interviewed the employee and showed her video of the incident, the employee identified Roland, who also goes by “Quez.”

That same day, at about 3:35 a.m., a Bunnell resident of Bacher Street reported to police that Roland–whom the victim identified by name to Bunnell police–attempted to break into her bedroom, according to a Bunnell Police Department report. He’d manipulated the air conditioning unit on the bedroom window, then reached into the room in an attempt to remove the unit, the victim claimed. When the victim screamed for her mother to call police, the suspect ran off.

Roland faces a dozen charges, including two counts each of false imprisonment and felony battery, grand theft, burglary and armed robbery.