MIAMI — Fingerprints helped tie a man to a frightening burglary in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood, according to the city’s police department.
It comes a little more than a week after Local 10 News reported on the break-in. Police said a 13-year-old girl woke up just before 4 a.m. on Oct. 21 to find a man in her bedroom rummaging through her items at her home off Northwest 10th Avenue and 48th Street.
Authorities said she screamed and ran to her parents’ bedroom as the masked man made off with her iPhone. They said the girl and her father used the Find My iPhone feature to track the stolen device down to the nearby home of then-20-year-old Dougelin Jean, who turned 21 on Monday.
They saw a man holding the stolen phone. Police said officers eventually arrived and attempted to detain Jean, who began walking away from them and passing a row of garbage cans before going into the home.
Jean and his father walked out a short time later, an arrest report states, and officers detained Jean.
“When questioned, he denied having the stolen phone and claimed that the phone in his possession was his own, which did not match the description provided by the victim,“ the report states. ”Moments later, Jean’s father approached officers and produced an iPhone in a silver case, stating he found it near the garbage cans, the same area Jean had just walked past.“
Authorities said the girl and her father “immediately confirmed ownership by successfully unlocking it with the correct passcode.”
A detective “reviewed a still image of the incident and positively identified Jean based on a prior arrest for multiple burglaries in the same area” and fingerprint evidence from the window of the victims’ home, where he’s believed to have entered, came back as a match to Jean, police said.
Sunny Isles Beach police arrested Jean early Thursday morning after they said he drove into the island city in a stolen Toyota Tacoma. Officers eventually pulled him over and took him into custody in North Miami, police said.
Jean, a convicted felon, also had a gun on him at the time, authorities said.
State records show he got out of prison in April after serving time on a Collier County conviction for battery on detention facility staff.
Jean, as of Friday, was being jailed in Miami-Dade on charges of burglary of an occupied dwelling, grand theft, grand theft auto and felon in possession of a firearm.
County records show he was being held in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on a bond of more than $36,000.
Miami-Dade Judge Mindy Glazer noted Friday that Jean “has four open cases where he is charged with burglaries and grand thefts.”
He’ll also have to face a judge on those charges.
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