Key West sentenced to state prison for Upper Keys burglaries

A Key West man already sentenced to state prison for Upper Keys burglaries was sentenced October 24 to 24 months in prison after pleading no contest to grand theft of a motor vehicle for stealing a Chevrolet Corvette and felony possession of marijuana in two separate criminal cases.

Monroe County Circuit Court Judge Mark Jones handed down the sentence to Timberlen Terrell, 19. Assistant State Attorney Christina Cory represented the state.

The grand theft auto case stems from December 26, 2017, when staff at the Niles Sales and Service auto dealership on North Roosevelt Boulevard called police to report a gate broken into and discovered a white 2016 Corvette Stingray missing; it had been stolen the previous day. Using the vehicle’s OnStar tracking system, the car was found in Miami-Dade County by Miami-Dade Police.

Four days after the car was reported stolen, Niles Sales and Service staff gave Key West police the license plate that was on the Corvette when it was returned from Miami-Dade. That plate was assigned to a Chevrolet van stolen from the Key Largo Baptist Church that was recovered on October 11, 2017, when Holmes Beach, Fla., police pulled it over and arrested Terrell for possession of less than 20 grams of marijuana.

A church official told Key West police the church was burglarized on December 24, 2017, and that’s apparently when the van license plate was stolen. At the time, Monroe County Sheriff’s Office detectives told city police Terrell was a suspect in the church burglary, van theft as well as a burglary at a Key Largo business.

Photos captured December 25 by the SunPass system in Homestead and at the Golden Glades Interchange in Miami-Dade show a Sunpass transponder stolen from the church in the Corvette and the stolen license plate and a Niles Sales and Service sticker on the car.

On February 8, police interviewed Terrell in the Stock Island jail, where he was held following his marijuana arrest, and asked him to square how the transponder and the license plate, both of which he was suspected of stealing by Sheriff’s Office detectives, were on the Corvette. “Terrell said he’s not sure, he does a lot of drugs,” Key West police Detective Marcus Del Valle wrote in an arrest affidavit.

Terrell was arrested for grant theft auto on March 14, the day Judge Peary Fowler signed an arrest warrant.

Key West police had arrested Terrell on January 13 for felony possession of marijuana over 20 grams and misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia.

Staff at the Courtyard by Marriott on North Roosevelt Boulevard had called police to report a man was trespassing. When officers arrived, they found Terrell, who said he was applying for a job. A marijuana cigarette was under the chair on which he was sitting. Police searched his backpack and found 28.5 grams of marijuana and a pipe to smoke it.

Jones sentenced Terrell to 24 months in prison each for the grand theft auto and the felony marijuana possession, the sentences for which will run concurrently. He received jail time served for the paraphernalia charge.

On September 17, Circuit Court Judge Luis Garcia sentenced Terrell to 30 months in prison for the Upper Keys burglaries and the van theft.

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