After a fight at a Florida Keys strip club, he drove off. But not in his car, cops say
Two men got into a fight at a Florida Keys strip club Thursday night.
When the fight was broken up, one of the men, 35-year-old Charles Thomas Schneider of Pompano Beach, hopped into a Jeep SUV and drove off.
The problem is, it wasn’t his car. The vehicle actually belonged to the man he fought minutes earlier, Luis Alvarez, according to a Monroe County Sheriff’s Office arrest report.
The incident happened at Woody’s, a popular bar at mile marker 81.9 in Islamorada.
The Jeep was running when Schneider got into the driver’s seat, but luckily for Alvarez, he had the key fob in his pocket. As Schneider drove off, Alvarez pressed the security button on the fob, causing the Jeep to come to a screeching halt, Deputy Anfernee Rodriguez wrote in his report.
Schneider, however, kept revving the engine, forcing the car to nudge forward along U.S. 1.
Rodriguez arrived at Woody’s and wrote in his report that he saw the Jeep screeching its tires on the highway and “failing to maintain its lane.” The deputy turned on his overhead lights and siren and pulled Schneider over.
Deputies say his speech was slurred and he smelled strongly of alcohol. Rodriguez said he and other deputies arrested Schneider, who was “irate” and said he knew he was going to jail, according to the report.
He refused to take a field sobriety test, Rodriguez said.
After Schneider’s arrest, deputies first took him to Mariners Hospital in Taverier for medical clearance, then to the Plantation Key jail.
“While there, Schneider stated this was only happening because he decided to drink, and he has been staying clean for some time,” Rodriguez wrote in his report.
On Friday, Schneider was being held on a $28,000 bond on a felony larceny charge related to the Jeep, misdemeanor driving under the influence, and two counts of misdemeanor resisting officers.
This story was originally published September 11, 2020 at 6:03 PM.
