Not only did Jacksonville police get thief's license number, but license itself

June 3, 2010 - 11:13am

Dan Scanlan

Be careful what you leave behind — that’s the advice Jacksonville police are probably glad wasn’t followed in the case of two recent burglaries that ended Wednesday with arrests.

In one case, a license plate that fell off a car let police track down its owner. In the other, it was a drop of blood.

Police said security camera video from a March 14 break-in at a San Juan Avenue Hess station shows a dark four-door sedan pulling up to the store about 1:45 a.m. and a man getting out with a garbage can smashing the window.

The video shows the man filling the garbage can with cigarettes from the store and loading it into his trunk. That’s when the video shows the car’s license plate falling off before the perp drives away.

Officers found the license plate and ran it though the computer, tracing it to a Tennessee vehicle registered to 49-year-old Gary Browder at a Foxboro Road address in Jacksonville, according to the arrest report.

Browder was already in the Duval County jail, having been arrested Monday on two unrelated charges, and the latest burglary charge was added.

The other case started with a Jan. 21 burglary to International Bio Resources on North Julia Street. Police evidence technicians found some blood at the downtown crime scene and submitted it to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement laboratory for DNA testing.

The results of the tests recently came back matching 40-year-old Reginald Lawrence Everette of West 41st Street, an arrest report said. Everette was found already in jail following a May 21 arrest on unrelated charges, the latest charge added, police said.

The Florida Times-Union