MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – A northeast Miami-Dade rabbi is facing a robbery charge that deputies said stemmed from a confrontation with a county water meter reader outside of his synagogue.
Deputies said Yitzchok Kaplan, 44, was arrested after the dispute outside of Chabad of Aventura Isles, located at 718 NE 191st St. in the unincorporated Ives Estates area, on Wednesday morning.
According to an arrest report from the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, the meter reader arrived in her marked county truck and went up to a meter at the location.
She had a meter rod in hand and used it to lift a meter cover that was on the ground, deputies said.
Deputies said Kaplan “aggressively approached her and began screaming, ‘No, no, no, you’re not doing this today’” and then asked what she was doing on the property.
They said the worker told Kaplan she was “just reading the meter.”
Authorities said Kaplan “continued to approach the victim while still yelling and snatched” the rod from her hand.
The report states that the worker asked Kaplan for the rod back and he told her “no.”
“The victim advised (Kaplan) that the stick is county property and that she was a county employee,” a deputy wrote. “The victim stated that she took a picture of (Kaplan) holding the metro (sic) stick and walked across the street to create distance as she called the police.”
Deputies said they took Kaplan to MDSO’s Intracoastal station and said the rabbi declined to speak with investigators. They arrested him on a charge of robbery by sudden snatching, a third-degree felony.
Kaplan appeared in front of Judge Mindy Glazer in bond court on Thursday. She found probable cause for the charge and ordered him released on his own recognizance.
His attorney, in court, called the case a “misunderstanding.”
Kaplan and his attorney declined to speak with Local 10 News after being released from jail.