Stolen Van Led Police To Street
TAMPA — Shortly before 9 p.m., after she came home from work, Magda Bravo was cleaning up the glass and the blood and the mess, thanking the Lord that the man arrested in a break-in at her house waited until she was gone.
For the 63-year-old clerk, who lives at 1215 E. Flora St., the ordeal began about 14 hours earlier, as she was washing off pollen that accumulated on her car.
“I heard sirens,” she said.
Minutes later, at 6:45 a.m., as she got into her car and backed it out of the driveway, she looked to the right and saw police cars whizzing by.
“I thought nothing of it,” said Bravo, chalking it up to another early morning police chase in a city where crime never sleeps.
Listening to the radio, she heard that police were chasing a man who stole a white van at the Sunoco on Sligh Avenue.
She said she didn’t give that much thought, either.
Until about 8:20 a.m., 10 minutes after clocking in to work.
“I got a call from the police,” Bravo said. “They said someone broke in to my house.”
Efren Hernandez, a 42-year-old man recently released from jail on burglary charges, had broken in to her home, police said, stealing jewelry, clothing, a duffel bag, a towel, a Gillette Trac 2 razor and a big bag of Fritos, which he was eating as he walked down East Flora Street.
Officer J.R. Wilkinson — responding to the theft of a white van whose driver smashed through the yard of a vacant home, knocking down railroad ties, a fence and a well before smashing into Jamal Kahn’s house two blocks away at 1302 E. Sligh — spotted Hernandez near Bravo’s house.
He matched the description of the man who stole the van, which belonged to General Works, a Tampa construction company.
There was something else about Hernandez.
He was wearing a size 18 aqua blouse, gray slacks and a gray reversible jacket.
His elbows were bleeding.
Police also found a glass crack pipe with cocaine residue. Hernandez was taken to the Orient Road Jail and charged with burglary, third-degree grand theft and cocaine possession, all felonies, and possession of drug paraphernalia, a misdemeanor. Bail was set at $12,000. Hernandez told police he had nothing to do with the auto theft.
Police will check fingerprints on the van and DNA.
Washing away the blood on her beige carpet and the blood in her sink and the broken glass, Magda Bravo said she considers herself blessed.
“God was watching over me,” she said.
