Clearwater Criminal Defense Law Blog

A home at the end of Pine Lake Drive is worse for the wear after a Tampa woman allegedly struck it with her vehicle last week.Officers of the Tampa Police Department say Danica Ellen Zagara had already been involved in one accident before arriving in the living room of the house at the end of Pine Lake Drive. According to the arresting officers, Zagara told them that she left the Copper Top Pub, five miles to the east, and was traveling home. An individual who witnessed her first alleged collision at Fowler and Florida avenues, followed her and said he witnessed her pilot her 2002 Dodge...

An uncle and his nephew have agreed to plead guilty to federal drug trafficking charges based upon allegations by the Drug Enforcement Administration that their Plant City business was a front for a Mexican drug distribution operation.According to authorities, Saul Velasquez-Bazan, 49, ran the distribution business while his nephew, 20-year-old Alexandro Velasquez was its accountant. They say the commerce being conducted at the pallet business on Turkey Creek road was covering for a drug operation that brought in over $2 million over four months this summer.Police began investigating the...

A warrant has been issued for the arrest of a Tampa man after the battered body of a woman was discovered in a Clair-Mel ditch.On the first day of November an individual riding a horse in the area of 20th Avenue S and 58th Street came across the body of twenty-six-year-old Evelyn Marie "Eve" Woodham. Hillsborough County Sheriff's deputies say that Woodham's body experienced trauma to its upper regions, but declined to offer more information as to the method and reason for her expiration. According to deputies, the person responsible for her death is James Luis "Snoop" Scott, a man they say...

Detectives from the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office have been sent over eight hundred miles to the west to retrieve the prime suspect in a murder committed earlier this week.Forty-three-year-old Keith Earl Davis was apprehended in Sulphur, Louisiana yesterday, mere hours after a warrant for his arrest was issued. Davis will be returned from the city, which is on Interstate 10 about twenty miles east of the Texas-Louisiana border, to Hillsborough county to face charges of first-degree murder, robbery with a weapon, and grand theft. According to Tampa police, Davis is responsible for the...

The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office is seeking to obtain almost $45,000 in funds its deputies discovered in the course of a raid upon the Plant City home of a man alleged to have been engaged in the sale of illegal drugs.A filing in state court late last week alleges that the money was used in connection with illegal narcotic activity, and therefore in violation of the Florida Contraband Act. If the court agrees, the sheriff's office could wind up with a significant windfall.According to sheriff's deputies, an informant passed information to a deputy in late winter this year accusing...

A Holiday teenager will be facing adult first-degree felony murder charges, as Pasco County authorities say he battered and robbed a neighbor who died shortly thereafter.Fourteen-year-old Alexander Perez was indicted by a grand jury December 9 for a beating and robbery prosecutors say he committed against a neighbor on September 23. They allege that Perez approached his neighbor around two o'clock that morning as he was sitting on his porch and began physically attacking him. Prosecutors say Perez forced Walker into his own home where Perez robbed him of cash and continued the assault....

A Seffner woman was released from federal custody today but is all but certain to face state charges for actions she's alleged to have committed leading up to her custody in the federal prison system.Cortnee Nicole Brantley was freed from a federal halfway house today. She was released after serving ten months of a twelve-month sentence for misprison of a felony, as she did not inform the police officers whom her ex-boyfriend is currently on Florida's death row for killing that she was a felon carrying a firearm.Brantley, now 28, was convicted of the rarely-enforced crime in 2013, but she...

A Brandon couple are facing charges relating to cannabis cultivation after sheriff's deputies were called to the home to investigate a complaint of a loud television.Deputies were called to the residence of Eduardo Jesus Estevez-Aguilera, aged 34, and Barbara Ann Wilson, aged 42, in Brandon's Mayfield neighborhood early on the morning of November 21 to respond to a domestic disturbance complaint. The responding deputies said that they noticed a "strong odor" of cannabis in the home, which led them to obtain a search warrant, executing it later the same morning.Upon entering the residence,...

A Tampa man was arrested early this morning after authorities allege that he stabbed his father to death.Da'Mon Timothy Rashaad Larry was booked into the Hillsborough County Jail at half past four this morning and is being held without bond on a charge of second-degree murder with a weapon. Tampa police say that the 23-year-old man attacked his father, Damon Larry Sr., and the two became involved in what witnesses described as a fistfight. They said that 43-year-old Larry Sr. attempted to disengage from the fight, but Da'Mon followed him to the ground and continued attacking. Police say that...

A Pinellas county jury began deliberating the fate of two St. Petersburg brothers earlier today. The defense rested after making its closing arguments in the first-degree murder trial of Shirune and Gregory Green, both of whom are on trial for the slaying of Floyd Lassiter in the spring of 2014.According to the state of Florida, the Green brothers went to Lassiter's home early in the morning of Saturday, May 10 in search of a vehicle. They say the brothers had keys to Lassiter's two vehicles, a Toyota and a Honda, from a burglary of his Jordan Park home two days prior. Lassiter, who was...