A 60-Year-Old Man Tied to Burglaries and a Car Theft Is Arrested in Palm Coast

Timothy Smith is a 60-year-old resident of Ridgewood Avenue in Daytona Beach who thought Flagler a good place to be with a car he is accused of stealing, and Palm Coast a good place to scope: he’s accused of two attempted burglaries in the B-Section.

Flagler County Sheriff’s deputies located Smith in a parking space on Kingswood Drive in a car that had been reported stolen in Daytona Beach. He was apparently located after the stolen car triggered a hit on the sheriff’s license plate reader cameras.

In body cams, when he was being merely detained early Wednesday morning, he played coy. A deputy asked him his name. “You have to do your homework,” Smith said. After the deputy explained that he could face more issues if he did not provide his name after the commission of an alleged crime (the when and why of providing one’s name is not straightforward), Smith seemed to comply. He initially gave his birth year as 1959, the correct year, but deputies had heard 1969, and he did not correct them when they repeated the year.

The deputy then explained that he was just being detained at the moment, as deputies went about their investigation. “Well obviously I’m being arrested because that’s a stolen car,” Smith volunteers.

“We have to make sure it’s all confirmed first,” the deputy tells him.

“Yeah, I’m sure it is,” Smith says. He tells the deputy that three suitcases and a lunchbox in the car belong to him.

The deputies find a wallet with the driver’s license of a resident in Palm Coast, and a checkbook with a North Dakota address. The first name on the license was also Timothy, a B-Section resident. Deputies also found credit cards and debit cards belonging to “Patrick,” a man from New York–not Smith. When another deputy returns to the car where Smith is being detained and again asks him his name, apparently unaware that by then Smith had provided his actual name, Smith gets angry, cussing out the deputy and repeating his name and adding, “born out of Syracuse, New York.”

Deputies also found a new cell phone bought with Patrick’s credit card. The purchase was documented through surveillance video at the Palm Coast Walmart, where Smith had used the self-checkout line.

When asked about Patrick, Smith tells a deputy he’s not answering any more questions. Later, however, he explained that he’d gotten the car from a black male in Daytona Beach, as he often does.

He was arrested on a series of charges: five counts of Unlawful Possession of a Stolen Credit Card, two counts of Unauthorized Possession of a Driver’s License, Grand Theft of a Motor Vehicle, Fraudulent Use of a Credit Card, and Driving with a Suspended License. He was booked at the county jail.

“We may never know why he chose Flagler County to commit his crimes but I am glad that our deputies were able to locate him and get him off our streets before he could prey on even more victims,” Sheriff Rick Staly said. “We continually push the #9PMroutine on our social media sites, which is a reminder for residents to lock their doors to their vehicles and homes at night to help prevent themselves from becoming a victim. While we hope that people would not try to take things that don’t belong to them, you can help prevent crime and protect yourself by keeping your valuables secure and
keeping your doors locked.”