Three arrested after report card is left at burgled home

By Tonya Alanez, Sun Sentinel
6:48 p.m. EDT, September 27, 2013



Burglary tip: Don't leave behind a backpack containing your getaway driver's high school report card.

That is precisely how three Pompano Beach burglary suspects were caught this past week, authorities say.

When two teenagers — Tyrrel Jayson Richardson, 18, and David A. Nelson, 19 — were allegedly filling their getaway driver's backpack with stolen jewelry and electronics Wednesday, the residents cut the burglary short, a Broward Sheriff's report said.

In their frenzy to rush out of the home in the 100 block of Southeast 12th Street, the thieves left the backpack on the couch, the report said.

In the backpack was a report card and class schedule identifying 18-year-old Jonathan Christopher Lee, a 12th-grader at Olympic Heights Community High School in Boca Raton.



"Apparently, they were spooked during the burglary and they took off," Broward County Judge John "Jay" Hurley said Thursday at Lee's first-appearance court hearing. "However, they left your backpack behind on the victim's couch. Your class schedule and your progress report were in the backpack left on the couch in the victim's home with the jewelry and the electronics."

Lee, Richardson and Nelson, all of Boynton Beach, each were held without bond in the Broward Main Jail.

According to police reports, the burglary had been in the works since Sept. 21.

Nelson, reports say, formed a plan to target the residence after visiting the home with his girlfriend.

That girlfriend, who was not identified in police reports, told police Nelson called her during the burglary to advise, "He was in!"

Lee later admitted waiting in his BMW while Richardson and Nelson burglarized the home, reports say.

When Broward Sheriff's deputies searched Lee's BMW, they found a costume jewelry ring with a pink center stone and two clear stones on the floor of the passenger's side, reports said.

Homeowner Ernest Puya told police he recognized the ring as his wife's.

Puya told police that about $70,000 in valuables were stolen, including a Rolex, cash, charms and necklaces, electronics, a Mossberg shotgun and a .44-caliber snub-nose pistol.

At Richardson's first-appearance court hearing Friday, Hurley identified him as the one who left the backpack on the couch.

When Richardson confessed, a police report says, "He advised that he needed money, and that's why he did it."

Nelson's arrest report says he admitted "planning the crime," but said "he was cheated out of participating."

tealanez@tribune.com, 954-356-4542 or Twitter @talanez.


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