A Bradford County Sheriff’s Office image shows one suspect taken into custody for car burglaries at the Keystone Heights RV Park on September 28, 2024.
BY DAN HILDEBRAN
One of five defendants arrested for breaking into cars in the Keystone Heights RV Park in September 2024 was sentenced to five years in prison as part of a plea agreement.
Jessie Eugene Barnes, 18, of Gainesville, pleaded to armed burglary, possession of burglary tools, and grand theft of a vehicle. The state dropped additional counts of trespassing, loitering, wearing a hood or mask on the property of another, and four more counts of armed burglary.
During a hearing on Wednesday, January 29, Barnes’s lawyer, Delinda Jan Smith, told him the maximum sentence for the armed burglary count was life, and the maximum penalty for the other two counts in the plea agreement was five years each.
According to the Bradford County Sheriff’s Office, deputies were called to the RV park on September 28 after surveillance cameras showed several men scaling the facility’s perimeter fence. One deputy wrote in an arrest report that when he arrived on the scene, he found a pickup backed up to the wall behind the Orange Blossom Restaurant. Parked next to the white Dodge pickup was a gray Kia, in which a window had been smashed, and the steering column had been broken, exposing the ignition.
While one deputy waited near the vehicles, two more entered the park searching for the suspects.
“At 4:02 a.m.,” wrote Deputy Glen Ward, Jr., who was waiting near the pickup and Kia, “five suspects jumped over the fence from inside the RV park. The suspects appeared to be wearing masks and jumped the perimeter fence in the exact area where the truck was backed up near the fence.”
Ward reported that he engaged the suspects with loud verbal commands. Four of the men lay down on the ground while one, Barnes, threw a gun back over the fence and climbed back into the park. Deputies later located the 18-year-old in the back of the park.
Ward said three of the suspects were wearing masks and gloves. Deputies found flashlights and screwdrivers inside the truck. Three guns were found on the ground inside the perimeter fence where the defendants were observed. A fourth weapon was found in the truck.
Five RV park residents reported that their vehicles were burglarized, with a firearm, knife, oxycodone, $75 in cash, a wallet, and a backpack taken from the vehicles.
The cases against the remaining adult defendants, Raymon Jakravis Campbell, 20, and Jayden Manns, 19, both of Gainesville, are still pending.
