MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – A man who tracked his stolen semi to a northwest Miami-Dade industrial area led officers to discover a storage yard with even more ill-gotten tractor-trailers, authorities said.
They said it also led to the arrest of a Miami man leasing the lot: Roger Alexis Medina-Diaz, 36, of Allapattah, now faces 13 felonies.
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They said he was running a chop shop using parts from the stolen big rigs.
According to police, on Friday afternoon, a man who had his truck stolen from a warehouse area just south of Opa-locka called a detective working his case to tell him that the truck’s GPS pinged to the area of Northwest 65th Street and 35th Avenue in the unincorporated Brownsville area.
Several detectives went to the area and spotted the stolen 2020 Freightliner in a yard at 6250 NW 35th Ave., an arrest report states.
Police said they found 11 stolen trucks on the lot. The tractor-trailers, they said, were taken from various locations in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.
The trucks were “in various states of being dismantled for parts” and the majority “had their ignitions removed and/or tampered with,” the report states.
Authorities said workers on the lot pointed to Medina-Diaz, who was subleasing a portion of it. He runs a truck repair shop called PR Trucks in the Gladeview area, authorities said.
Police said they went to that shop, located at 7201 NW 27th Ave., and spoke to Medina-Diaz, bringing him back to the lot for a live show-up to be identified as the man storing the trucks on the lot.
Once that happened, police took him into custody. Authorities said he declined to speak with them.
Medina-Diaz, facing 11 counts of grand theft and one count each of operating a chop shop and possession of a vehicle with altered identification, remained in the Metrowest Detention Center Monday on an $87,500 bond and an immigration hold.