Owners Say They Were Robbed 3 Times
PLANT CITY — After their Parkesdale Farm Market in Plant City was burglarized three days in a row, 66-year-old Jim Meeks and his 36-year-old son Jim Meeks III, decided enough was enough.
Thursday night, after closing up, they moved their cars from the parking spaces in front of the store at 3702 W. Baker St. to make it seem as if no one was there.
Then they waited.
“Me and my son said: We will spend the night here,” the elder Meeks said. “He is not going to get any more money.”
Before long, they heard noise on the roof.
Then the board that had been placed to cover the 10-inch hole in the roof was moved.
Then a man popped down, landing on the concrete floor with a thud.
The Meekses pounced.
“We jumped on him,” said the elder Meeks, who is 5-foot-10 and 180 pounds. His son is about 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds. “We fought steady for 20 minutes. Punching, kicking. He was on drugs. We couldn’t hurt him.
“We were on top of him, and I reached for the phone and called police,” Meeks said. “We were trying to hold him down and talk, but I had to put the phone down because he tried to get up again.”
In minutes, police arrived and arrested the man, who identified himself as Justin Daniel Peppers, 22, with his state prison inmate ID, a police report said.
Peppers was charged with burglary, battery of a person older than 65, battery and criminal mischief. He was taken to the Orient Road Jail.
Tuesday, Meeks had arrived at the market he inherited from his father-in-law, Roy Parks, in 1978, and found someone had taken about $140 from the cash register.
“We could not figure out how he got in,” Meeks said. “The doors were locked, and they have steel pins in them, and we have an alarm.”
Wednesday morning, when Meeks came in to open the market, he noticed he had been victimized again. This time someone took about $80 out of the till.
“We didn’t leave as much money in the register,” he said.
Puzzled at how anyone could get in and out of the doors without tripping the alarm, Meeks began looking around the store.
Then he looked up.
It hit him.
“The only place he could come was a 10-inch hole in the ceiling,” he said. The hole was filled by a bucket and once was covered by a turbine vent that a storm blew off a few years ago.
Still, he had his doubts. How could anyone fit through such a small space?
Meeks, as he had done before, called Plant City police, who were patrolling the area at night. They said the burglar would be back.
So Meeks scampered up to the roof and bolted down the bucket, figuring that would prevent further intrusion.
He was wrong.
When he opened the store Thursday, Meeks found the intruder had returned. This time, a large air conditioning unit was removed from the wall leading to his office and a box of quarters — $500 worth in all — was missing.
Looking up at the ceiling, he noticed the bucket was damaged. Despite his earlier doubts, he was not convinced that whoever was breaking in to his business was coming through the roof.
That’s when Meeks drew the line. “I’m not going to lose any more $500,” he said.
That night, Meeks and his son were armed when Peppers dropped through the hole in the roof, but once he saw the man had no weapon, Meeks says he put his gun down.
“I can’t shoot an unarmed man,” he says.
Before being carted away, Peppers started complaining to police that his face was cut, his back hurt and his ankle was twisted in the scuffle.
“He started complaining that he was beat up,” Meeks said, laughing. “He wanted to press charges against us for beating him up. And I had blood all over me.”
