Cops say Facebook post put her at the scene of the crime
A Florida Keys woman may have shared too much on social media when she filmed herself in a bizarre video posted on Facebook in August trespassing on a waterfront property where police say hundreds of dollars worth of fishing equipment was stolen.
Monroe County Sheriff’s Office deputies said they found three of the four $125 fishing poles leaning against a wall outside Deborah Jarvin-Fellows’ Plantation Key home after receiving a tip from her roommate. They arrested her Monday on a burglary and grand theft warrant.
Jarvin-Fellows, 48, is being held in county jail on a $20,000 bond.
According to Deputy Joel Rios’ arrest report, a pontoon boat owner, who sometimes keeps his vessel at a friend’s oceanside house on Lake Road, reported the rods stolen earlier this month. The report came after a video was posted on Jarvin-Fellows’ Facebook page showing her walking about that property and onto the vessel.
When Rios went to Jarvin-Fellows’ house on Gardenia Street, which is in the same neighborhood as the Lake Road home, he saw three fishing rods matching the description of the stolen poles leaning against a wall. He took photos and showed them to the boat owner, who said the gear belonged to him.
Jarvin-Fellows denied taking the rods, saying someone left them outside the house. But her roommate said Jarvin-Fellows told her she “borrowed” them from a neighbor’s boat, and she offered them to the roommate’s children, according to the report.
Jarvin-Fellows did, however, tell Rios she filmed herself walking onto the property and the boat “without permission of the owners,” Rios stated.
In the eight-minute video, posted Aug. 13, Jarvin-Fellows films from a first-person angle, sometimes showing her face, entering the yard of the stilt house from the driveway, walking under the house and to the backyard, and then onto the boat. The video does not show her taking the fishing rods.
She talks continuously about how much she loves the house, which is for sale, and how she hopes to live there one day.
“I want this house. I want it,” she says. “So, I pray the sale doesn’t go through.”
She then continues to film items in the yard and on the boat, saying, “It has Debbie written all over it. This needs to be my house.”
This story was originally published September 25, 2019 at 8:51 PM.
