An ex-convict who has been living in the Village of Ashland will apparently be relying on the public defender’s office to represent him in his latest court battle.
Devan James LaRue, 24, was arrested in February after crashing a car on U.S. 301 and then leading Wildwood police officers on a foot chase. LaRue, who had alcohol and cocaine in his system at the time, threatened to give HIV to a police officer who took him into custody. Then during a ride in an ambulance to The Villages Regional Hospital, LaRue began spitting blood and saliva at the police officer and an EMT.
In 2008, LaRue was sentenced to nine and half years in prison in connection with the death of a woman in Pinellas County.
When he was only 15, LaRue snuck past his sleeping mother, stole her keys and sped off in her Mitsubishi Eclipse. As a Pinellas County sheriff’s deputy was trying to pull LaRue’s vehicle over, he hit the gas and smashed into a Jeep Wrangler killing a 34-year-old woman.
After he was released from prison last year, he moved into a home in the Village of Ashland. In June, LaRue was arrested after allegedly throwing a water bottle at a woman at the Lynnhaven postal station. At the time, he had reportedly been acting irrationally. But LaRue’s family retained criminal defense attorney Cary Rada, then a candidate for Lake County judge, who took LaRue’s case to a jury and won an acquittal.
This time, it appears LaRue will be represented by the public defenders’ office as he faces charges of assault on a law enforcement officer/EMT, leaving the scene of an accident, driving while license suspended, resisting arrest and reckless driving. The court has already determined LaRue to be indigent.
He continues to be held without bond at the Sumter County Detention Center.
