"Just ain't right:" Florida murder suspect now accused of illegally towing vehicles

i'm going to take just a couple of minutes and outline what i think is a wake-up call for everyone that may be in the business to rent property have signed contracts and i want to ask everyone to deep to take a deep dive into into their heart and their soul about are you really running your business ethically and morally as well as you can and here's what occurred stole mobile home park signed a contract with a towing company called strapped towing recovery and the purpose was so that stole could keep the mobile home park clean for those of you who may not be familiar with running mobile home parks it's easy to collect derelict vehicles and as a result of that people don't want to live there so still was being responsible when they signed a contract but you can have a contract and then you can have a contract so may the 15th and 16th our contract company called and called up and showed up and began searching the community for any vehicle that was in violation of the ordinance well they made a tow on the 16th it's interesting they showed up late in the evening and they towed a suzuki from the carport now understand these folks had their vehicle in their car port backed in but it did not have a tag on the vehicle so the employees of strapped towing were actually going not only through the park but walking up in people's car ports and looking to see if the vehicle had a tag on it the vehicle was operational and running it was a this particular vehicle was a suzuki and strapped backed up and starts to tow the vehicle out of the parking lot the owners come out and say hey don't tell our vehicle away and they go you sign a contract to live here the contract says that you have to have a valid registration they tried to bring a tag out they asked if they could get their car back the owner of the company and the tow truck driver michael den refused to let them have their vehicle and he towed it away despite the consternation and request by the owners so away the vehicle went at about 11 30 at night so the next day on the 17th the afternoon of the 17th two families go to this tow company in mulberry florida to retrieve their vehicles and there's another disturbance well it starts out rather peaceful when they tell the employee that's there we want our vehicle one of them paid like 265 dollars the other paid like three hundred dollars how there was two different prices of toes from the same place we don't know the storage yard was more than 10 miles away more than 10 miles away from the tow location that is a violation of law so anyway they they paid and we'll talk about juan for a minute juan muriel and that group paid to get the vehicle back but the vehicle was in the back of the storage lot and the battery was dead now according to them the battery worked the vehicle ran when it was towed away but now the battery's dead so the employee calls michael den and elisa then who are at this particular time in bartow eating dinner and said hey these folks want their vehicle back they've paid the price and they go well we're eating dinner we'll be there in a little while so they finished eating in bartow and then they drove all the way back to mulberry and an argument ensued because michael now wants to charge them another fee to hook up to their car in the back of the tow yard and tow it out front so an argument ensues subsequent to the argument one who has a 14 year old young lady in the car drives the vehicle that he arrives in down to the corner drops off a 14 year old girl spins around in the car charges back where their people are arguing in the road and runs into michael denn swerves and hits michael denn's brother injuring him then he spins the car around jumps out of the vehicle michael then approaches him shoots him and kelsey of course the sheriff's office is notified we respond michael then says i'm standing my ground i'm standing my ground and we go what do you mean you're standing your ground this the the victim juan certainly juan muriel certainly would have been arrested had you simply call the sheriff's office for charging back in the vehicle and hitting your brother but when the car spins to a stop and one gets out of the vehicle without a firearm and you shoot him ultimately in the back of the head and kill him as he's walking clearly with nothing in his hands posing no immediate threat that's not stand your ground so he was arrested that caused our detectives both our homicide detectives who also got our northwest detected northwest district detectives involved going what happened what was the genesis of this problem well it was an over aggressive tow company that's where it started we also learned that in addition to towing this car that by the contract they signed to live there was technically a legitimate toe but it wasn't the spirit of the intent of the process the the spirit of the rule simply is that you don't want derelict vehicles collected in the mobile home park but this guy and his team that was there had flashlights walking up underneath people's carport to see what they could see and found this one without a tag on it and towed it away well not only did they tow that one we found where they've towed 19. they towed this vehicle totally separate incident do you know why they towed that vehicle they said it was parked on the grass and there is an authorization by stole mobile home park if you want to park a second vehicle if you put down a gravel area then that's permissible well they parked on the gravel area that they created that was allowed by stall mobile home park and still this tow firm towed their vehicle away they said well there was grass growing up through the gravel so they parked on the grass that's nasty i just like in polk county vernacular that just ain't right so we got to investigate him and our detectives did a remarkable job there is a law that says that a tow truck has to have specific markings on the site name address dot numbers news flash this didn't have any markings on the site further investigation revealed that yes some toes were technically contractually appropriate but then look how the people got treated when they came there and paid their dollars and 265.00 dollars that's what caused this entire event to deteriorate into what was ultimately a shooting and us charging michael with second degree murder well guess what yesterday was the next phase of an investigation by our property crimes detectives when we arrested alisa den and michael den who owns strapped transport towing and recovery company with 19 counts of towing outside of a 10 mile radius that's a third degree felony alisa was charged with two counts of improperly marked tow vehicle michael was charged with a 19 counts plus two counts plus he was charged it's a felony because the state law says hey if in the process of the tow the people want their vehicle back you have to tell them and offer a reduced fee of no more than half price to let them have the car back now i want you to think about this for a minute had michael then even though he was technically correct even though he was ethically ethically and morally bankrupt when he towed that vehicle from out from under the garage or the carport had he followed the law and given them the opportunity to pay half the fee that night that murder the next day never would have occurred his brother never would have been hit and when they came to get the car and paid the money and he and his wife showed up mad and wanted to charge him another fee for bringing the car back from the back of the lot and how did the battery get dead overnight i'm suspicious who knows how that occurred so we arrested them and you know what we towed the tow truck that alisa was driving so after we towed the tow truck we put alisa in the back of a patrol car and strapped her in and put her in the county jail you see she was driving the tow truck this way and then we put it on the back of another tow truck and towed it this way and then we put her in jail well we didn't put michael den in jail because he's already in jail for second-degree murder so we went down and added on a lot of other felony charges so while i understand stowe has a responsibility to keep the park neat and tidy so that people will want to live there and certainly that live there have a right to live in a nice clean environment this is an example where i don't think stole did its due diligence and hired what i consider a fly by night towing company that clearly unequivocally didn't follow the law and took advantage of hard-working poor people just trying to make ends meet we talked to another lady we talked to another lady who had 260 dollar charge that lady had two part-time jobs she had to take an uber pay an uber forty dollars to take her down to recover her vehicle she lost a day's wages the two part-time jobs together only paid her eighty dollars a day so it took her what three or four days wages just to get her car back that is wrong that is so wrong that is wrong on every level i don't know how people who take advantage of hard-working poor people trying to make ends meet sleep at night but they're sleeping in the county jail at night or maybe they're not sleeping but occasionally just occasionally we arrest people and it warms our heart to see them go to jail my heart is warned that we lock these people up that were taking advantage of poor hard-working folks just trying to get along in life here's the message you better not do that because my detectives are not happy about it i'm not happy about it and we're going to be looking for the unethical people that are taking advantage of the hard-working poor people just trying to get along in life so if you don't want your tow truck towed away on the back of another tow truck if you don't want to go to the county jail you better ensure that you comply with all the rules all the county ordinances and the state law and oh by the way we have seized this white tow truck and we plan to forfeit it and once it's successfully forfeited we'll put the appropriate polk county sheriff's office markings on it and use it for our purposes at our fleet center so we'll save the taxpayers money while teaching these folks a lesson so one would be alive today had michael den just followed the law there never would have been a confrontation in mulberry at the tow yard and after they paid the fee they were going to take one last shot at taking advantage of hard working folks by saying you want your car out now you got to pay us to tow it from the back of the lot that's when the event totally deteriorated are there any questions attorneys say there exonerates our is as it shows the new dumping of self-defense we haven't seen that video have you seen the video i have seen the video and it is currently in active litigation in the courts because quite frankly i can say this when we were doing our investigation and served our search warrant that night that video that has mysteriously appeared wasn't there so there's an active criminal investigation ongoing about where that v where that video was and there's active litigation in the court so it would be inappropriate for me to comment any further on that but let me tell you clearly and unequivocally we are all over that like a cheap jc penny suit um that's what they pay that defense attorney for to throw all this nasty in the air we'll ask that defense attorney to hearken back that had his client not murdered juan had his client followed the law that night none of this would have happened that's the truth so that attorney can throw all that baloney out there he wants get your fees get them up front because we're going to lock them all up for violating the law sheriff um a lot of people just feel helpless whenever their car gets code and they basically have to do whatever like they have to pay whatever the tow company says they do what can people do whenever absolutely first and foremost the overwhelming majority of tok companies do it exactly by the rule they're ethical they're moral they understand that people are really in a really tough situation because their car is broken down they legitimately inappropriately parked in the wrong place and and the tow companies doing what's right that's not the ones we hear about this is the ones we hear about the ones that toe out of your carport the ones that take flashlights and walk around at 11 o'clock at nights and if you've got a tag on your vehicle the ones that tow you off of a gravel parking space that's legit and they claim you're parking on the grass that that tow company gives all the others a bad name but if you'll google up you can look at the county ordinances and the state law that says specifically how they have to operate and if you find that you have been abused if it's civil there's civil remedies and you can go to court with that either yourself or there's there are lawyers for legal aid that will assist or if it's criminal we'll put them in jail but at the end of the day we understand that when you run a mobile home park you can't allow derelict pieces of crap cars to collect because the the people who live there don't want to weave around that kind of stuff you've got to keep a clean nice environment in your mobile home park but you ethically and morally and legally have the obligation to employ the right tow company doing the job the right way and that's not taking flashlights and meandering through the park at 10 11 o'clock at night that's just wrong it's just wrong now stole has reimbursed some of the people because when it's come to their attention they figured out that strapped towing inappropriately seized some vehicles but this investigation still underway we haven't found all of the victims yet we want to talk to them because we want to bring more criminal charges and if there's other mobile home or businesses that have these fly-by-night people violating the rules you ought to clean your act up before we get to you or you too will get strapped in the back of a patrol car and towed to the county jail it was it was late on the night of 15th and the 16th and then the night of the 16th so it was it's a lot of vehicles and that included the one towed off of the gravel and the one they towed from underneath the carport this is horrendous conduct you don't treat your fellow man or woman like that you just don't do that not in polk county not in our community we respect each other if you violate the rule you violate the rule if you violate the law you violate the law we get that but you don't you do not take advantage of people when they're down and out you don't take advantage of people when they're not down and out you treat people with respect how would you want to be treated and that entails following the law when you're doing your toes and recoveries and that sort of thing any other questions people beware don't take advantage of these hard-working folks these hard-working poor folks these hard-working people that don't have much and think they don't have an ally they got an ally in my deputies and detectives you violate the law we're going to put you in jail guaranteed have a good day

Channel: FOX 13 Tampa Bay

Views: 1,036,085

Keywords: polk county florida, sheriff grady judd, lakeland, micheal denn, elissa denn, Strapped Towing, murder, shooting, Juan Barosso-Muriel, tow scam, tow truck

Id: HPF_Bw_zqtA

Length: 26min 13sec (1573 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 12 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/fellasheowes]

Glad I learned some Polk County vernacular

[u/TootsNYC]

You know what struck me most about this? The lady who works two part time jobs and only earns $80/day. And taking an Uber to get her car cost $40 plus she didn’t get paid.

[u/AssPennies]

"We're all over that, like a cheap JC Penny suit."

Worth watching to the end for that one line!

[u/SynesthesiaBrah]

Why do I see this sherif on the news so much, is Polk County just full of criminals or something? So many recent semi famous cases within the past maybe 2 years have been in his jurisdiction.

[u/Ritehandwingman]

Can I get a TL:DW?

[u/madeamashup]

Justice came for Florida man and his wife... they should have set up shop in Toronto where tow trucks are ORGANIZED criminals and have the support and protection of the police. Could have got away with the illegal tows and the murder as well.

[u/targtheviking]

Tow truck companies are absolute cocksuckers. I had my car towed from IN FRONT OF MY HOUSE on street parking. 4 visits and 800$ later I still fantasize about a fire in that tow office.

[u/hamrmech]

Who hires a towing company called "strapped towing" and doesnt expect trouble? I think the mobile home park is at fault. Shot a man over a tow. What pieces of shit. Towed one with no plate! My county was 4 months late getting my plates and title handled. You could tow everything, the goddamn county hasnt worked in over a year.

[u/CryptoPonziScheme]

Solution: Be fair to people and don't fuck them over. You have no idea how they're feeling at that particular time and if they simply don't give a fuck anymore, they will fuck you up.

Reminds me of that guy who killed those 2 people because they were shoveling snow into his yard.