Beach Cops Solve Case Of The Pilfered Parrot
MIAMI BEACH (CBS4) - Alicia Jerez and her African Grey parrot named Freckles have been together for seven years. But on Tuesday, she noticed something was wrong. Someone had broken into her home.
"And I saw that he was gone! So immediately I knew that someone came and stole my bird," said Jerez.
Jerez thought she would never see Freckles again.
"It was two days without sleeping, worrying about him, you get so attached to your pet, you're worrying about what they're going to do to him. And I knew, whoever took him, it was to sell him," said Jerez.
That same morning, Miami Beach police officer Robert Montesinos spotted a guy running out of an apartment complex around three in the morning carrying a white bird cage with an a large gray parrot inside. Montesinos watched as the man ran to a waiting Mazda in the 77-hundred block of Dickens Avenue. Feeling that something was a little odd, he followed the vehicle until 83rd Street and Hawthorne Avenue where he pulled the driver over for running a stop sign.
When he walked up to the car the front seat passenger, later identified as Anthony Jesus Jimenez, said he had 'just bought the parrot from someone on 82nd Street'. Since the Montesinos couldn't tell if a crime had been committed, he let them go.
The following day, Montesinos saw a flyer about a stolen parrot named Freckles and got in touch Detective J. Lemus who was assigned to the case. Lemus said the bird had been stolen from Alicia Jerez who lived in the area where the officer saw the man with the parrot. The two compared notes and the cage and the color of the parrot matched. Lemus and Montesinos then decided to pay Jimenez a little visit.
Jimenez reportedly confessed to at one time having the stolen bird but said he didn't have it anymore because he had sold it to a pet shop, La Jungla at 1865 W Flagler Street, for $275. He was arrested and charged with dealing in stolen property.
Police retrieved Freckles from the store and the purloined parrot has been reunited with Jerez.
"He's very special. We have a special relationship that only we understand. My kids say that I love him sometimes more than them," said Jerez.
