Crime Archive

Beginning in 2018, the DEA and the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office partnered in an investigation into a Drug Trafficking Organization responsible for distributing kilogram amounts of heroin, methamphetamine, and fentanyl within Okaloosa County.

Named Operation Songbird, the years long investigation utilized numerous investigative techniques to identify members of the Drug Trafficking Organization and locations utilized by the Drug Trafficking Organization.

Over a three day period, the major crimes unit in the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office caught 13 men, who were trying to solicit minors through social media.

The 13 men are Anthony Martinez of Pace, Michael Preston of Navarre, Bryan Mejia of Pensacola, Terry Deer of Fairhope, Ala., Trevon Mitchell of Pensacola, Zachary Frantz of Pace, Joshua Prows of Milton, Jose Leonardo-Ramirez of Pensacola, Tristan Thrower of Pensacola, James Lee Ray of Pensacola, Andrew Walters of Gulf Shores, Ala., Eric Menchaca of DeFuniak Springs, and Patrick Bradt of Crestview.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) agents and officers from the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office, Homeland Security Investigations, and the FBI arrested Gary David Goeke, 68, of Gulf Breeze on July 12. He was arrested for 30 counts of possession of child sexual abuse material and one count of promotion of the sexual performance of a child.

A Navarre Woman was arrested July 6 following an investigation that revealed she defrauded a woman in her 90s out of more than half a million dollars over the course of 18 months. The investigation was done by the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office.

Sheena Russell, 45, is charged with larceny of over $100,000, fraudulently obtaining property over $50,000, and exploitation of an elderly person of $50,000 or more. All of charges are first degree offences.

A 29 year old Milton man was booked into jail on June 3 after investigators with the Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Office began looking into him following a traffic stop.

The man, Mark Anthony Frate, was stopped on June 3 after a sergeant with Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office noticed that Frate was driving down the road at four in the morning with a two year old in his lap. The two year old was unrestrained in the car.

State Attorney Ginger Bowden Madden announced on March 29, 2022, that Circuit Court Judge Clifton Drake sentenced Daniel Lee Weidman of Gulf Breeze to serve a total of six years in county jail. Those six years will be followed by four years of probation for the thirty-five criminal counts of which a Santa Rosa County jury convicted him after a jury trial on February 3, 2022.

A 26-year-old Navarre man was charged with DUI, refusal to submit to DUI testing and obstruction without violence after flying through a stop sign in front of a Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Office deputy.

A Navarre woman trying to avoid being arrested on an outstanding warrant buried herself under the insulation in the attic, where she was found by a Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Office deputy.

A Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Office deputy called to a domestic violence disturbance at a Milton home Jan. 8 home ended up arresting two women – a grandmother and her 31-year-old granddaughter.

A shoplifting suspect detained while running down the airstrip across from the Walmart Supercenter in Navarre was found to have a stolen backpack in which he placed a stolen car stereo system. The 31-year-old from Chiefland, Florida, was carrying a skateboard as he ran.