Teens had pasts of torment

A mom on drugs while pregnant. Mental health issues. But was their crime target truly random?

Drug abuse, mental illness and a history of failure at school plagued some of the six Fort Lauderdale teens — ages 14 to 16 — who are charged in the burglary that netted a trove of riches.

Oneof the six,14-year-old Joshua Sargeant, had been hospitalized under the BakerAct for trying to harm himself, records indicate. Another was declared “incompetent to proceed” in a previous criminal case.

So how did six troubled kids, all with lengthy rap sheets and only one old enough to drive, happen to hit a home in Fort Pierce, more than 100 miles north of their neighborhood, where they would a find a Porsche, a safe brimming with $200,000 cash and two loaded handguns?

“Absolutely, 100 percent random,” said Bryan Beaty, a spokesman for the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office “They hit the motherlode. The investigation is closed.”

Yet a public defender familiar with the previous cases involving all six of the teens charged with burglary and grand theft has doubts.

So too does the homeowner who lost his car, money and guns.

“There is no evidence of otherwise, but it makes me suspicious,” said Fort Pierce

businessman Brett Browning. “I think they’re working for a gang, and some adults running it. They’re just doing the dirty work.”

Gordon Weekes, Chief Assistant Broward Public Defender, said he believes “law enforcement should be looking for other individuals as putting this whole thing into motion. This group does not have the sophistication to mastermind and pull off that kind of operation.”

With the permission of Sargeant’s great-grandmother, his legal guardian, Weekes spoke Wednesday about the background of one of the boys his office has previously represented.

An eighth-grader at Dillard Middle School, Sargeant was born to a mother who used drugs while pregnant, Weekes said. At the age of four or five, Sargeant was diagnosed with attention-deficit/ disorder.

On Dec. 16, marijuana possession and burglary charges against Sargeant were disposed when he was found to be “incompetent to proceed,” Weekes said.

“He is someone who could have benefited from in-patient drug treatment, but there is a lack of facilities where that can be addressed,” Weekes said.

At 13, Sargeant was hospitalized under the Baker Act for twoweeks when he was discovered trying to harm himself.

“His great-grandmother is involved, loving and caring, but he is a very young child with a longstanding history of mental health and substance abuse issues that have left him significantly behind,” Weekes said.

So howdid Sargeant and five accomplices, packed into a stolen Hyundai Santa Fe SUV, drive north on Interstate 95 and at midafternoon on April 27 find their way to a house on Marina Drive, on North Hutchinson Island, in Fort Pierce?

According to statements the teenagers gave to investigators, they picked the neighborhood at random, knocked on a few doors

checking to see whether anyone was home, before finally settling on the canalhouse of Browning.

Theback door was open, the teenagers said. The safe was in the kitchen. The keys to the garaged white Porsche Cayman were visible. The handguns were on a table in the living room.

It sounds too serendipitous to Weekes. “It is likely there was some outside influence,” he said.

Beaty said the teens’ statements to police were consistent. They did not mention anyone else being involved, he said.

Sargeant was the only one of the six teenagers who denied being in on the burglary. He told investigators hewas “retarded,” and then asked for a lawyer.

Browning, who is in the real estate and insurance business, said he does not know whether his house was targeted, and added that he has no connections in Fort Lauderdale.

St. Lucie County Sheriff Ken Mascara, in a statement, described the boys as “thugs” who had targeted the community.

Mascara said detectives from several agencies, including the Broward Sheriff’s Office, Delray Beach police and Fort Lauderdale police, worked for two months to put the case together. Their work “led us to identify these six individuals and their extensive history of similar crimes throughout the South Florida region.”

After getting away with the guns, car and the loot, the teens went on a spending spree, police said. One youth claimed he bought permanent gold teeth for $11,000; a $10,000 gold chain; a $3,500 gold bracelet; an $80,000 Dodge Challenger Hellcat for his mom, which he put in her name; and a $25,000 2009 Mercedes C300 in his brother’s name.

However, no further investigation is planned, and no other charges are pending, Beaty said.

Browning’s Porsche was recovered in Delray Beach, and is now back in his garage. But he is still missing the money and guns, he said.

“Absolutely, 100 percent random. They hit the motherlode. The investigation is closed.” Bryan Beaty, St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office