Crime Report

We’re still catching up on our crime reports. This week we have a few extra DUI cases from the Florida Wildlife Commission that probably involved boats, along with drugs, fraud, burglary, battery and more. Plus one has the name of a famous boxer – but it’s not him.

Davonte Martin showed up in the blotter as “booked.” We noticed his hair and facial tattoos, so we figured we’d check out the story. It’s not clear why he was booked but he does have an open misdemeanor case from a January 2018 arrest for a small amount of marijuana. It’s also not clear why such a small misdemeanor case would still be open over a year later.

He has a substantial criminal history including a 2018 felony arrest involving trafficking in heroin and fentanyl that indicates a 364 day jail sentence, but it appears that was done through In-House Arrest through PBSO.

The In-House Arrest Program is a cost-efficient means of monitoring inmates in their own homes with the added benefit of reducing bed usage within our facilities. In-House Arrest is accomplished through the use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) monitoring, which allows constant satellite supervision. GPS technology allows the Alternative Custody Unit (ACU) to know where an inmate is located at all times. The sophistication of this technology permits the ACU to establish exclusionary zones and when violated, the ACU is immediately notified that he or she is in an unauthorized area. GPS supervision provides a cost effective means of offender control while maintaining a high degree of public safety.

We see multiple other priors including felonies in 2015 in Palm Beach and one in 2013 in Broward involving delivery of cocaine. We also see multiple “traffic criminal” and misdemeanor cases dating back to 2012.

His latest arrest shows an address on Congress in Boca, though most of his previous cases showed an address in Boynton Beach.

Century Village’s Heather Romano (35) was arrested for at least two different gas station burglaries. According to the police affidavit Romano and her boyfriend Benjamin Greenstein would enter the gas station convenience stores and steal cases of Red Bull. Apparently they’re expensive as the report indicates a value of roughly $70/case.

One burglary took place at the Marathon gas station on Glades Road at Butts Road. Another one was at a Valero in Boca.

Greenstein was arrested once in mid-April and released on what we like to call “catch and release.” We don’t understand this approach, but sure enough he committed more crimes and was arrested again on May 7th and this time they seem to have decided to hang onto him for a while.

Both were also arrested in Hollywood in early 2018 for stealing nearly $1000 worth of merchandise from a Home Depot. The case against them on that is still pending.

Oddly we see another Heather Romano arrested in Sunrise with some substantial similarities but the birth month is 2 months off. Is this the same person? We can’t be sure.

So basically this pair has been terrorizing two counties at will for over a year now and our court system seems unable or unwilling to stop them. On the bright side Greenstein seems to be in custody at least for now.

Virginia Jeffery (34) of The Banyans at Broken Sound was arrested on three “Failure to Appear” items. Two of them appear to be out of open traffic criminal cases involving hitting a tree on Clint Moore at the end of 2o17, leaving the scene, and then not showing up to court.

She has a history including a 2016 felony arrest for stealing items from Bloomingdales, a misdemeanor domestic battery from 2011, and some other traffic cases over the years.

Isle of Boca Dunes resident Michael Tyson (28) was arrested for violating an injunction against repeat dating violence. He has also had some marijuana arrests and some other minor criminal cases such as driving while suspended.

24-year-old Adonis Batista is a resident of the Edgewood apartments on SW 66th just north of Sandalfoot Blvd. He was arrested in early May for using counterfeit dollar bills at the Sandalfoot McDonalds.

The police described them as poor fakes and he was refused by the McDonalds drive thru two out of three times, all back in August of 2018. It’s not clear why deputies waited until now to file the charges against Batista and make an arrest.

Batista has an extensive criminal history for a 24-year old including a 3-year prison sentence for several burglaries committed in 2015 and 2016, and a 5-year probation sentence he just received from Broward for felony marijuana possession, plus other offenses like a 2014 felony grand theft of a motor vehicle in Coconut Creek.

On the bright side he’s still in the county jail, at least for now.

Jose Soto (57) is a fairly young blue-hair in the Brighton section of Century Village. He was just arrested for retail theft up in the Gardens Mall in Palm Beach Gardens after walking out of a few stores with a total of nearly $1000 in merchandise. We covered him and some prior arrests in one of our March crime reports.

Terrence Merrit (34) of East Boca was arrested at the Lake Worth Beach Tri-Rail station. He was initially investigated for a battery on a woman on a train. That woman declined to prosecute. The security officer ordered Merrit to leave the train station and he argued with the officer and did not leave. PBSO charged him with trespassing for failing to leave after being given a lawful order.

We see no criminal history for Merrit. He pled guilty and agreed to a payment plan to cover the nearly $500 in fines and fees.

31-year-old Jessica Ortiz of Gables Town Place near Town Center was arrested and charged with a variety of counts involving heroin, suboxone (a drug to help get off heroin), and writing checks to herself from the business where she worked. We don’t see any criminal history for her.

Mitchell Doane (21) from East Boca was arrested on multiple drug counts, mostly involving marijuana and THC. This is another in a long line of cases where government agents intercept a package in transit, get a search warrant, and then use that to arrest the defendant. They also found a small amount of alprazolam (Xanax) and an amphetamine.

Doane is a Boca High grad and student at Florida State. He also founded RichFit Nutrition which sells a workout drink.

Nathan Stronge (38), also an East Boca resident, was arrested for huffing cans of Office Depot Cleaning Duster. These are supposed to be used for cleaning electronics. He told Boca PD he was huffing the cans to get high.

Stronge has a series of court cases – mostly misdemeanors – in our county dating back to 2001. He was charged with one felony in 2018 for battery on a senior, though that charge was dropped.

39-year-old Tobias Seays of East Boca was arrested in Boynton Beach after a police license plate reader detected a car with a stolen license plate. They pulled him over and found a bag of heroin or fentanyl powder inside the car along with the prescription drug diazepam, an unknown white crystal substance, some Prednisone pills and a scale.

Seays has an extensive criminal history including two stints in state prison. One of his earlier cases involving crack cocaine was written up in the Palm Beach Post back in 2009.

The four gentlemen pictured at the top seem to have been caught up in rare BUI crackdown by Florida Fish and Wildlife on Lake Boca. All four were arrested on the evening of April 28th within about an hour or two of each other.

All appear to be East Boca residents. The cases are somewhat similar. With the exception of Fonseca, Fish and Wildlife officers stopped them in boats on Lake Boca. Fonseca was already docked when he was approached.

They performed “seated” field sobriety tasks (probably bogus) and all but one refused breath testing. His BAC was around 0.18.

BUI penalties are much lower than DUI penalties, and in particular they won’t have problems with their drivers licenses.

On reading Teuchert’s arrest paperwork it seemed like they did not have a valid reason for stopping his boat, so if he fights it he has a good shot of winning.

Agustin Polanco (57) of Southwind Lakes was arrested for DUI on Military Trail in Boynton Beach at Woolbright. He was pulled over for going 60 mph, which leads to another one of our pro tips. If you’re going to drink and drive then don’t drive like an idiot. Of course our better pro tip is … don’t drink and drive!

Polanco blew a roughly 0.13 on the breath test, which is not going to help his case.

Court records show a felony in 2007 for habitual driving while suspended and a very old felony for cocaine trafficking back in 1986.

51 year old Michael Magill of Woodfield was arrested for DUI after driving halfway into a canal at the back corner of Stone Creek Ranch near Saturnia Isles. The location is somewhat remote about halfway between Lyons and 441 and halfway between the Boca-Delray line and Atlantic.

The Woodfield resident was first reached by Palm Beach County Fire Rescue who indicated he was in the drivers seat when they found him with the engine running, which is important for a DUI prosecution – if they can get the witness to come to court.

Magill also refused field sobriety tasks and breath testing. Altogether it’s a winnable case for the prosecution but they’d have to work hard for it and that’s not always common for prosecutors in South Florida. He might beat this one.

Magill had a prior arrest for leaving the scene of an accident in 2015. That was dropped. He was charged with DUI in 2008 and won the case at trial.

Jeremy Voisine (34) of the Boca Rio apartments was arrested at Palmetto and Winikoff for driving while suspended after being pulled over for speeding in a school zone. He has already pled guilty to both charges and received no jail time.

Court records show 25 cases for Voisine including multiple driving while suspended charges along with other charges like a 2017 felony for passing a bad check or something like that. He got 1 day in jail for that one. Back in 2005 he had another felony that got him a 3 year prison sentence.

We’re trying to cover the domestic battery cases less, but this week had a few worthy of coverage.

According to the victim, Daniel Lawlor (37) was just released from the Broward County jail and she paid for Uber to bring him home to the Bella Vista apartments in Boca Del Mar.

Is it just us or … maybe he’s not the one!

A couple days later he got drunk, attacked her and held her hostage. He punched her, kicked her, broke her nose and maybe her ribs.

Not surprisingly Lawlor has a substantial criminal history, mostly in Broward.

So maybe he’s not the one.

William Wells (31) was arrested for battery at what we think is a drug rehab facility in Delray. Wells has a reported address in East Boca. An unknown dispute led to a fight between Wells and at least one other person. Wells dragged the victim around the parking lot and/or struck him.

Wells has a 2018 felony arrest for battery on a law enforcement officer and threatening a law enforcement officer that arose out of a trespass and disorderly intoxication incident. There was a similar incident in 2010, and a lesser incident in 2008.

Sandra Guardiola is back after being in one of our March reports. This time she was arrested for domestic battery for slapping her ex-fiancé.