Crime – Page 61 – West Boca News

8 Batteries Charged: Arrest Week Part 2

We got behind so we’re splitting our arrest report into three parts. Here’s part two. Click the following for 5 drug arrests – part 1. And again, all are innocent until proven guilty

On the far left, Shanique Warren (age 20) was arrested for battery and booked early this morning (Friday), and has already been released. Her reported address is in Century Village. The courts have it as a domestic violence case. We found no other history for her, but think she might possibly be from Tampa.

Sarah Goldsberry (2nd from left, 29) was arrested for battery late last night and released this afternoon. She’s a Spanish River grad and her reported address is in the Greenbriar senior community in Boca Chase. The court has the case marked as domestic violence. We see over 30 cases (including traffic tickets) for her in the court system dating back to 2004, including at least a few for domestic violence and others for drugs.

Susan Wantz (far right, 50) was arrested Tuesday afternoon for battery. Oddly she wasn’t released until Thursday morning, but no bond was required. Ms. Wantz made a brief appearance in the local news media, angry about the KKK guy in her Sandalfoot neighborhood. This incident is listed as a domestic battery. Wantz has had a couple of minor cases in the county with the last one a disorderly charge that was dropped back in 2008.

Joel Padin (left, 39) was arrested for battery and aggravated assault, and booked early Monday morning. His reported address is in the Boca Gardens apartments. He was released that afternoon.

[2nd from left has been removed as the charge was dismissed.]
Michael Chicurel (2nd from right, 21) was arrested for battery and probation violations late Sunday. His reported address is near Coral Sunset elementary. The West Boca High grad remains in custody. Per court records the probation comes from two felony cases he had in 2012 involving burglary (dropped), dealing in stolen property and other charges.

In his younger days he may have been a great pizza eater but that skill is not helping him today:

Last up, on the far right of the above picture, Mireya Delrisco (49) was arrested Sunday for battery. Her reported address is in The Vineyards near Veterans Park. We see no prior history for her.

5 Drug Cases for Arrest Week

We fell a bit behind in our arrest reports so we’re catching up.
Please remember that all arrestees are innocent until proven guilty, and also that the crime rate in West Boca is actually low.
Allen Massarella (far left, 24) was arrested early Saturday morning by Boca PD for possession of marijuana and drug equipment. His reported address is near Clint Moore and Military Trail and he’s worked at some West Boca restaurants. He just might be a fan of classic cars.
Mr. Massarella is fresh off a smaller marijuana case in March, and he appears to have had two previous marijuana cases in the county that were both dropped.
Simon King (far right, 28) was booked early on Monday the 12th by PBSO deputies accused of selling heroin. Apparently that’s illegal now.
Mr. King’s reported address is in the San Marco at Broken Sound community and he appears to work as a bartender in an area country club. Our research suggests he is a native of Ireland. We see no previous cases for him.
David Martinez (2nd from left, 23) was booked Tuesday morning for possession of drugs and drug equipment. He has no reported address but rather is listed as homeless with the zip code 33428. Unlike the first two, he remains in custody on $2000 bond.
Martinez had a felony robbery arrest and conviction in 2008, and an indecent exposure charge in 2013. Our research indicates he’s a Spanish River grad, which we’re sure will prompt a lively response from that crowd.
Katherine Knill (center, 34) was arrested Tuesday on one count of drug possession and several counts of possessing drug equipment, and released the same day. Her reported address is off Markham Way near the far western end of Sandalfoot.
Ms. Knill was arrested in 2012 and adjudicated guilty of forgery and possession of paraphernalia.
Matthew MacCubbin (18, center-right), with the same reported address as Ms. Knill, was arrested at about the same time and accused of possessing a small amount of marijuana and drug equipment. He was also released the same day.
MacCubbin, a senior at West Boca High with no prior history, may have had some issues living at home shortly before this arrest:

On the bright side, some girls seem to like him enough to pose with him:

Some faces obscured in response to a polite request.

Big Arrest in Home Explosion

Sheriff’s deputies have made an arrest in the Sandalfoot Cove home explosion case.
Eduardo Antonio Agudelo, age 34 and a native of Colombia, was arrested Tuesday afternoon and is being held on $18,000 bond. He’s been charged with what appears to be four felony counts:
1. Arson
2. Possession of over 20 grams of marijuana
3. Marijuana producing
4. Renting a property knowingly used for manufacturing illegal drugs
West Boca News has obtained two probable cause affidavits from the case, and researched Mr. Agudelo’s arrest history as well.

Of course we remind our readers that arrestees are innocent until proven guilty, and also that despite our crime coverage, West Boca has a lower crime rate than East Boca and much lower than the county as a whole.

In Palm Beach County, Mr. Agudelo has 10 cases listed though they appear to be from 6 incidents including 3 traffic stops. Aside from those, in 2006 he was arrested for a misdemeanor marijuana possession charge. That case was dropped by prosecutors.

In 2007 he was charged with felony marijuana possession and was sentenced to 18 months probation along with community service and nearly $500 in “fees.” Now he’s producing his own marijuana! The reports don’t disclose whether or not he was actually selling the marijuana he was growing, but if he was, he’d probably would’ve been using some seed to sale software so he could keep track of his expenses and his stock.

He also has had a few traffic tickets in Broward but we don’t see anything criminal there. We do see a history in Miami-Dade as well:

That shows four counts from 1998. Most were dropped, but the felony burglary and grand theft charges were resolved with probation and “adjudication withheld.”

He was arrested by the sheriff and booked the same day. From the arrest report, it appears that Mr. Agudelo voluntarily appeared at the Sheriff’s office on Gun Club Road in West Palm Beach. His “first appearance” was scheduled for this morning at 9 am but we do not have an update on what happened yet.
The affidavits show that the vehicle parked in front of the house was registered in Mr. Agudelo’s name along with a woman at an address in Miami-Dade County.
They also found substantial “correspondence” between Mr. Agudelo and a different woman [name omitted] (25) who has had a couple traffic cases in Broward County. She might be one of the women pictured in this photo, but we can’t be sure. We found it at a blog titled [woman’s name omitted – link broken].
We see a possible connection between the two associated with North Bay Village, an island between Miami and Miami Beach along the JFK Causeway.
The police affidavit indicates that a neighbor’s surveillance video shows Mr. Agudelo on the scene shortly after the explosion along with an as-yet unidentified woman. It’s lucky the neighbor was in possession of a camera similar to that of My Animal Command’s – Solar Trail Cameras For Security and Surveillance otherwise Mr. Agudelo may have never been arrested and tried.
On review of the affidavits, the arson charge looks like a stretch. Here’s what the investigating officer wrote:

As written it seems like he’s trying to squeeze an accident into an intentional arson. However the statute, section 806.01, includes damage resulting from commission of any felony, so the intent may refer to the other felonies charged. We still think it’s a weak arson case.
It may also be difficult to prove a connection between Agudelo and the other criminal acts. The police claim video puts him at the scene but we don’t know how clear that video is, and there does not appear to be any evidence showing what he did, if anything, inside the house.
Do they have enough for probable cause? Sure, that looks pretty clear. But proving his guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? That’s not going to be easy unless something else happens.
One other bit from all of this. There are two separate arrest reports. For some reason they have two arrests, one for the arson and another for the other three charges. In one arrest report they list his occupation as “unknown.”

And in the other a different officer listed Agudelo’s occupation as “drug producer.”

Now that’s a cop with a sense of humor.

Hash Oil, Home Explosion, and a Funny Video

We previously reported on a home explosion in Sandalfoot Cove. The local media are now reporting that the home explosion was caused by a butane leak from hash oil extraction.

For more on the process, see this article on Butane Hash Oil. That also led us to this hysterical video – but beware of coarse language and utter stupidity:

How Bad is Crime in West Boca?

After hearing concerns that our arrest reports were making West Boca look bad, we decided to do some research. We have good news.
We’re doing a three-part series on crime statistics in West Boca, Boca Raton, and Palm Beach County. In this first part of the series, we compare West Boca to East Boca, and both to the county as a whole.

Update: In Part 2 we look at arrest rates by zip code in all of Boca Raton.

We requested data on every person booked by the Palm Beach County Sheriff in the first quarter of 2014. That data includes the zip code of the arrested person’s residence. Boca Raton has nine zip codes. There are various ways to break down east vs. west. For this exercise (and for other purposes) we define West Boca as being the following five zip codes: 33428, 33498, 33496, 33434 and 33433, with a total population of roughly 135,000 people.

East Boca is then the remaining four zip codes, 33431, 33432, 33486 and 33487, with 75,000 people.
The breakdown isn’t perfect. The city’s own data shows the municipal population at 84,000.
Here’s what the city lines look like:

There is no perfect division of east and west, but the zip codes are very helpful here because each arrest has a zip code associated with it.
It’s also important to note here that the Sheriff’s data includes every count someone’s arrested for as a separate line. In other words, if someone is arrested for battery and for resisting, that’s two counts. In January a man in West Boca was arrested for 36 counts of sexual assault on a minor. That kind of data could really skew the numbers.
So does it make sense to compare crime by number of counts, or by number of arrests? Again there’s no perfect answer. However within Boca, both east and west were close to 1.8 counts per arrest so it shouldn’t matter within Boca. And for county-wide numbers, it would be a lot of work to reduce to just arrests so we’re just going with counts.
West Boca Has Low Crime
The two biggest results we have to report are first that West Boca has a lower crime rate than East Boca, and that Boca as a whole has a much lower crime rate than the county as a whole.
In West Boca there were 1.7 arrests and 2.9 counts per thousand people in the first quarter. East Boca had significantly higher numbers with 2.9 arrests and 5.4 counts per 1000 people. While this might make East Boca seem bad, their numbers are actually much better than the county as a whole.
Palm Beach County has a population of about 1.35 million, and there were almost 15,000 counts county-wide, which means the county crime rate of 11 counts per 1000 people. Taking Boca out of the data gets it to over 12 counts per 1000 people in the rest of the county (i.e. north of Boca). So crime rates in the rest of the county are twice as high as East Boca and almost four times as high as West Boca
We’re still working on the data. In the next part we will go through Boca Raton to see which zip codes have the most arrests and which have the least.

Please keep in mind that there are all kinds of potential problems with our analysis. We did not look at the type or severity of the crimes people were arrested for – at least not yet. Counts can be felonies, misdemeanors, non-criminal infractions, probation violations, recommits and others. We did not (and could not) look at crimes by where they happened, instead relying on the address of the person arrested. Of course, people are innocent until proven guilty and the numbers cannot account for guilt. And there are other problems we haven’t even thought of. Comparing and contrasting our analysis and data with Crime Statistics Australia might aid us in deepening our future analysis, increasing the data range that we can draw on to better judge the local crime trends.