7Investigates has learned about car burglaries happening where you’d least expect — next to a jail. Some of the vehicles are potential evidence in pending criminal cases. The night team’s Heather Walker has the exclusive.
From the air, this field full of mangled and damaged cars looks like a junkyard.
The lot is behind a BSO jail in Pompano Beach.
But the vehicles here are not junk — they’re evidence.
This is where BSO stores cars involved in homicide and traffic homicide investigations.
Now, 7News has learned that on May 30th, detectives discovered someone cut through a chain-link fence and burglarized 10 cars.
Michael Gottlieb: “It’s a definite concern that those vehicles that are obviously being held for evidentiary purposes have been violated one way or the other, and that there was a failure to secure the lot appropriately.”
Michael Gottlieb is one of six defense attorneys who received this notice from prosecutors, letting them know about the burglaries.
His client, Julius Clark, is currently in jail, charged with vehicular homicide and DUI manslaughter for a deadly crash in January.
The car detectives say Clark was driving at the time was one of the cars burglarized.
Michael Gottlieb: “In all honesty, until I digest all the evidence in my case, including this newly discovered evidence, I have no idea if it’ll have any effect.”
A car involved in this crash was also burglarized.
Frantz Laine is accused of driving at speeds up to 112 MPH before causing a wreck that left two people dead in Tamarac back in 2023.
While some might find this breach in security concerning, the Broward State Attorney’s Office tells 7Investigates:
“Prosecutors do not believe the burglaries will have any effect on the cases…” because “…All evidence collection and testing… was completed prior to the reported burglaries…”
Michael Gottlieb: “It’s almost offensive, because when they say evidence and testing has been done on the vehicles, that’s from the state perspective. If we were talking about blood and the blood wasn’t stored in the right way, the state wouldn’t have that response.”
The state also says key pieces of evidence, like deployed airbags and items with DNA, were removed prior to the vehicles being moved to the lot.
A lot Gottlieb is now calling into question.
Michael Gottlieb: “I mean you have to scratch your head and say with all the cameras and all the law enforcement that’s going on, and somebody’s able to do it successfully twice, that there’s a serious security failure.”
Heather Walker: “You heard that correctly. We learned the fence was cut not once but twice. In an email obtained by 7Investigates, a BSO lieutenant wrote that after the hole was repaired, the fence was “damaged and breached again”. She called for deputies to conduct extra patrols of the area.”
Michael Gottlieb: “If any of these vehicles were damaged in a way that a defendant can raise a reasonable hypothesis of innocence, those cases are at jeopardy. I understand that a lot of people are going to say, ‘OK, these are attorneys just, you know, making a mountain out of a molehill.’ When you have somebody’s life on the line, it’s not a molehill.”
BSO turned down our request for an interview but told us there have been no arrests made in the case.
Heather Walker, 7News.
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