Man Sentenced For Attempted Burglary

A West Palm Beach man was sentenced September 12 to 34.05 months in state prison after pleading no contest to attempted burglary of a dwelling in two separate Key West cases stemming from September 3, 2017.

Monroe County Circuit Court Judge Mark Jones handed down the sentence to Marquis Wester, 27. Assistant State Attorney Christine Poist represented the State of Florida.

One attempted break-in happened about 7 a.m. at a house on Olivia Street. The residents told Key West Police Officer Cynthia Williams they awoke to Wester trying to get into the house through a window. One of the residents confronted Wester outside near a window and Wester tried to get away but got stuck between two fences.  While stuck, Wester told the resident that a neighbor had sent him there to fix the window.

Wester was able to unstuck himself and exit the property.  As he walked away, the residents were able to take a photo of him.  They followed Wester until they saw Williams and flagged her down.  Williams located Wester nearby and took him into custody.  Wester denied being at the house and stated he was looking for his hotel.

Back at the house, Williams found that Wester had tried to get inside through three different windows and damaged the screens of each one.

When Williams arrested Wester, she noticed a cut on one of his fingers and inquired into what happened. He gave two different stories: He cut it playing pool and he cut it doing a roofing job. The cut started bleeding onto her gloves when she handcuffed him, so she collected the gloves as evidence.

The other attempted burglary happened either the same morning or the night before on Aronovitz Lane, just a few blocks from Olivia Street. The victim told Officers Brenda Sellers and Kuniko Keohane that around 8 a.m., she discovered damage to a window and two screens on one side of the house. On another side of the house, two more window screens had been cut and removed from the frames. Three blood smudges were found in the area of the windows.

Police took photos of the scene and collected evidence, including swabs from the blood smudges. Swabs of the blood from Aronovitz Lane along with a buccal swab from Wester were sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) for analysis. The FDLE compared the two and determined that the blood swab and the DNA sample came from the same person and that person is Wester.  An arrest warrant was subsequently issued for Wester for the Aronovitz property.

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