PUNTA GORDA, Fla.–A 31-year-old St. Petersburg man was arrested on July 24 after the Pinellas County Sheriff’s office said he stole 125 bronze vases from a cemetery and sold them as scrap for “quick cash” to buy fentanyl.
According to arrest records, Douglas Deck, Jr. removed more than 125 vases from various burial plots at a St. Petersburg cemetery in mid-July. The vases were attached to concrete headstones at the gravesites and are intended to hold flowers or other ornamental and sometimes sentimental decorations.
Detectives were “tipped off” on July 21 by a local scrap metal yard and determined Deck’s identity for selling the vases for cash on four separate occasions, the arrest report says. The total weight of the stolen vases was 661 pounds of bronze for which Deck received $1,149 during four separate visits to the scrap yard, the report says. Detectives said they were able to recover 124 of the stolen vases, however, the damages were estimated to be approximately $150,000.
During the investigation when detectives told Deck that his bicycle was found in the cemetery where the crimes occurred, he said that he “found” the vases, then decided to “keep them for himself.”
The report says Deck was arrested on four counts of dealing in stolen property, one count of damage or removal of a tomb or monument and one count of possession of a controlled substance after deputies found 0.25 grams of fentanyl on him at the time of his arrest. Deck was booked into the Pinellas County Jail on a $107,000 bond, according to jail records.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 150 people die every day from overdoses resulting from opioids such as fentanyl. The CDC website estimates that Fentanyl can be up to “50 times stronger than heroin and up to 100 times stronger than morphine.” The site also warns that it is often laced with other drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine, in pills that resemble other prescription opioids.
Recently, GOP lawmakers and Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody asked the Biden administration to designate fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction” (WMD) because of the increased number of overdose deaths associated with the drug.
U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) introduced a bill in June that would classify synthetic opioids a WMD.
On July 19, at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) asked Gary Rasicot, the acting Assistant Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction, about Boebert’s proposal.
Rasicot, however, cautioned lawmakers about declaring such a designation because it could affect legitimate uses of fentanyl.
“Any declaration of fentanyl as a WMD, I think you have to carefully consider that because there are legitimate medical uses for fentanyl,” Rasicot said at the hearing.
“In regards to illicit fentanyl, I think you have to proceed with caution there as well because I think what you want to avoid is creating overlapping jurisdictions or even diverting limited WMD resources into a counternarcotics arena,” he added.
