Robbery suspect arrested
Police say he was one of three men who stole $ 100,000 in jewels five years ago
Five years after a jewelry heist led to an afternoon shootout in the middle of a Boca Raton mall, detectives say they have hunted down the second in a trio of men who got away with $ 100,000 in gems.
Chasing 37- year- old Edwin Carlos Bonell Bernal wasn’t easy. He had more than 30 aliases and, even though he was deported back to his native Colombia a number of a times, he always managed to sneak back in to theU. S.
This time, he came back in handcuffs. Extradited Wednesday, he’s facing a felony murder charge for the death of his alleged accomplice, who was shot and
killed by Leon Rozio, the jeweler who was ambushed.
Thursday, Rozio said Bernal’s arrest came as a welcome surprise. With five years gone, he said he’d lost hope of the other suspects being caught — and lived in fear of them.
“Believe me, since we didn’t know who these people were or anything, youhave tobe lookingover your shoulder all the time,” said Rozio, 70, who was robbed of his savings and scared into retirement.
Rozio still struggles with killing someone.
“I always believedinthe sanctity of a life,” he said. “And I took a life.”
Tracking Bernal and the other two surviving suspects, believedtobe part of an organized ring of jewel thieves, required a “lengthy and painstaking” investigation, police said.
“Outstanding work by our detectives,” police Chief Dan Alexander wrote on his Facebook page Thursday. “Persistence pays off.”
The crime happened in broad daylight on May 7, 2008, inthe parking lot of a strip mall on St. Andrews Boulevard. Rozio, then 64, was in his car, waiting for another courier who had gone intoSt. Moritz Jewelers, when the gang of men boxed him in.
They smashed his windows and grabbed a duffel bag of jewelry, then jumped into their getaway car, a silver SUV. The jeweler chased them and, he says, was nearly run over.
He opened fire on the SUV, hitting and killing the driver, later identified as 29- year- old Wilmar Andres Sierra Perez. The others ran to a white minivan and disappeared, taking the jewelry with them.
Rozio, who was licensed to carry a concealed firearm, was not charged in the shooting. Instead, the suspects are being charged with felony murder, which holds criminals responsible for deaths that occur during SunSentinel. com/ jewelrobberysuspect felony crimes.
The first arrest happened nine months after the crime. Oscar Gonzalez Londono, 34, of Colombia, came to detectives’ attention when investigators in Texas told them a man they’d arrested for entering the country illegally might have information on the heist.
During a daylong interview, he admitted being one of the robbers. Londono, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison, also named Edwin Andres Zaragoza.
Detectiveswere already on to Zaragoza, whose fingerprints were found inside the bullet- scarred minivanrecovereddays after the robbery.
In April 2010, they learned his true identity— Edwin Carlos Bonell Bernal — through a Colombian registry. It’s unclear how he was ultimately caught and extradited, and policewouldn’t elaborate.
Now, Bernal is being held in the Palm Beach County Jail without bail, police are continuing to search for a third man and Rozio is trying tomove on.
“After you kill a person, you try to be— if youwere good before, you try to be even better,” he said.