A Florida woman has been arrested and charged with a felony over more than $2,600 in damage she allegedly caused to a Tesla vehicle with a large wad of gum.
The car’s owner said the alleged gum wad vandalism was captured on the built-in cameras of his car at the parking garage of the JCPenney store at the Aventura Mall at about 12:45 p.m. on Saturday.
‘She was spotted by the security guard at the mall in their food court.’
After a police investigation, 45-year-old Yamaris Marrero of Hallandale Beach was arrested and charged with a felony.
Police said that she was identified through the video, which showed a vandal smearing the large wad of gum on the car’s door handle and then spitting on it. She was also seen getting into a white Honda Pilot before leaving the garage.
The police report said that she was spotted by the security guard at the mall food court on Thursday. She was taken into police custody shortly afterward. Police said she made an admission that was redacted from the publicly released report.
Marrero was originally charged for criminal mischief with a hate crime enhancement, but that was dropped on Friday and the charge was lowered from a second-degree felony to a third-degree felony.
She was held on a $2,500 bond at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.
The car’s owner told WPLG-TV that the damage was probably motivated by politics, because of “a divide in our country where certain views that are not accepted by a subset.”
He said that there was no personal interaction between him and the woman accused, and police said it was not a traffic dispute. He added that the damage from the gum rendered the door handle inoperable.
The interview with the Tesla owner can be viewed on WPLG’s news video report on YouTube, while the video of the woman smearing the gum can be viewed on an earlier news report.
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