A trio was nabbed with nearly $2,000 worth of merchandise stolen from a Walmart in The Villages.
Melvin Mendoza, 18, of Mount Dora, entered the store at Buffalo Ridge Plaza at about 6:30 p.m. Saturday and loaded a cart with $1,847 worth of merchandise, including three vacuum cleaners, a pressure washer and a Kitchen Aid ice maker, according to an arrest report from the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office.
The teen pushed the cart out of the store where 53-year-old George Francis Gerardi of Lady Lake was waiting in a white Lincoln four-door automobile. Gerardi and 46-year-old Alicia Lynn Murphy of Leesburg helped Mendoza load the stolen merchandise into the car.
They fled the scene, but were apprehended by a deputy on U.S. 301 at County Road 102 in Oxford. The stolen merchandise was visible in the vehicle, with the exception of a Shark vacuum cleaner which was found in the trunk. A pink bag was concealed in the vacuum cleaner’s box and the bag contained syringes and a substance that tested positive for fentanyl.
Murphy, a native of Dover, N.H., was determined to be the owner of the pink bag. She is facing charges of grand theft, possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia. In 2018, she was arrested during a traffic stop in Wildwood.
Mendoza is facing a charge of retail theft. He had been free on bond after two retail thefts at a Walmart in Lake County.
Gerardi is also facing a charge of grand theft. At the time he was being processed at the jail by detention staff, a body scan revealed he had “something abnormal inside of him.” The Paterson, N.J. native was placed in a holding cell. Detention staff later found Gerardi was trying to stuff items down the drain in his cell. It turned out to be Ziploc bags which contained fentanyl and methamphetamine.
In 2018, Gerardi had been arrested with drugs while driving a Lincoln automobile. At the time of that arrest, he was living at Lakeside Landings in Oxford.
