ORLANDO, Fla. – A deputy sheriff responded to a domestic violence call but left without making an arrest, in part because the alleged victim’s injuries were “inconsistent” with her claim of being strangled.
Police did not take anybody into custody in a stalking case because an investigator could not identify who was behind the wheel of cars seen on camera driving past the alleged victim’s home.
A detective investigating a forged property deed identified a potential suspect but reportedly uncovered no evidence proving the man wrote a bogus signature on the document.
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Despite not finding probable cause to arrest suspected criminals or issuing notices to appear in court, law enforcement forwarded those non-arrest cases to the office of Orange-Osceola State Attorney Monique Worrell.
Worrell’s prosecutors later closed the cases, citing their inability to prove guilt to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.
Worrell implemented a new policy this month, limiting the types of non-arrest cases her office would accept from law enforcement.
The state attorney cited a backlog of more than 13,000 non-arrest cases that she said is siphoning resources from other criminal cases that are more viable for prosecution.
“What this does is it delays justice for our victims,” Worrell said at a news conference last week announcing the new policy. “It delays justice for the community. And it’s an unnecessary cog in the wheel of justice. “
Through public record requests, News 6 obtained incident reports and internal prosecution notes from several non-arrest cases that the state attorney’s office has encountered in recent years.
It was not immediately known how those particular non-arrest cases compare to the ones still awaiting action by Worrell’s prosecutors.
“The Office of the State Attorney has not reviewed the 13,000+ backlogged non-arrest cases, so we are unable to offer any comments on them at this time,” a spokesperson said in an email to News 6.
Since the cases reviewed by News 6 did not result in arrests or prosecution, the names of people involved have been withheld.
“No evidence” that domestic violence occurred, records show
An Orange County deputy sheriff responded to a 911 call reporting domestic battery in March 2024 but left without making an arrest, records show.
A woman claimed her estranged husband had “choked her to the point she was unable to breathe” while she attempted to retrieve belongings from the house where she had been “kicked out” two weeks earlier, the deputy’s report indicates.
But the deputy concluded that the victim’s injuries were “inconsistent” with her story and may have potentially been “self-inflicted,” the report states.
“[The alleged victim] did not have any marks around her neck as if she was choked and instead had red marks on her upper chest area as if a hand went in a downward motion on her chest,” the report states.
Although the alleged victim claimed her husband was drunk and aggressive, the deputy noted that the husband seemed calm and “did not appear to be intoxicated.”
The husband gave the deputy a video he had reportedly shot while his wife and son were removing her belongings from the house.
“The video was uploaded to evidence to show the calm demeanor of [the husband] and that he at no point was trying to stop them from moving the furniture from the house,” the deputy wrote.
A family friend told the deputy that “[the alleged victim] lies constantly and tries to get [her husband] in trouble so she can maintain her status in the U.S. due to the fact they had a ‘green card marriage’.”
Although the deputy wrote in his report that “the aggravated battery by strangulation was unfounded,” records show the case was forwarded to the state attorney “due to it being unknown at this time how [the alleged victim] sustained the marks she did to her neck and the nature of the incident being domestic.”
Nearly an entire year after receiving records from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, one of Worrell’s prosecutors began reviewing the case.
The review included looking at records related to the husband’s prior arrest for domestic violence.
Criminal charges were never filed in that 2022 case, records show, in part because the wife told the state attorney’s office she would not participate in the prosecution.
After learning that the wife also did not want to prosecute in the most recent case and that her adult son did not intervene in the alleged attack, the assistant state attorney closed it.
“There was no evidence a battery took place,” the prosecutor noted in the state attorney’s internal case management system.
Representatives from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to an email from News 6 inquiring about the March 2024 domestic violence investigation.
A sheriff’s office spokesperson indicated the agency would continue sending misdemeanor non-arrest cases to the state attorney.
“We are not supportive of the policy in its current form as it could deny prosecution in some domestic violence and firearms cases and deny justice to some victims of those crimes,” a spokesperson for Orange County Sheriff John Mina said last week. “We would welcome the opportunity for true collaboration in this matter.”
Michelle Sperzel, the CEO of Harbor House, previously told News 6 that domestic violence cases occasionally do not result in an immediate arrest.
“Strangulation is something that might not show right away, and it might show up later with a bruise behind the ear,” said Sperzel, whose organization works with domestic violence victims.
Sperzel said stalking cases are also difficult for law enforcement to prove immediately.
Police investigating stalking case unable to “corroborate anything”
A woman walked into the Winter Garden Police Department in November 2024 and reported that she was being stalked by another woman, her former landlord.
The alleged victim said videos captured by her Ring doorbell camera showed the ex-landlord’s cars repeatedly driving by her house.
According to a detective who later reviewed the footage, one of the videos appeared to show a silver Nissan Sentra passing by the house without stopping.
“I could not see who was driving it,” the detective wrote in a report.
Another video showed a different silver car, possibly a Chevrolet, parked in front of a neighbor’s house.
“I could not see who was inside the car,” wrote the detective.
An acquaintance of the alleged victim told police that the woman had previously complained about being stalked.
Believing the alleged stalker would have driven by a license plate reader on East Plant Street, the detective ran the former landlord’s tag numbers through the system.
“I did not see any of [the ex-landlord’s] vehicles come into Winter Garden through there at any point, let alone when the Ring videos were recorded,” the detective’s report states.
The detective later called the ex-landlord, who claimed she had not visited Winter Garden recently and did not know where the alleged victim now lives.
The former landlord told the detective the alleged victim “has been filing numerous false reports against her for various things” ever since an apartment fire forced the former tenant to move out and the landlord could not provide another unit.
The former landlord discussed with the detective the possibility of seeking a restraining order or filing a defamation case against her former tenant for making false allegations, records show.
The detective spoke with the alleged victim again two weeks later.
“I told her I have not been able to corroborate anything, particularly the videos she provided,” the detective wrote in a report. “I told her that the case would be forwarded to the State Attorney’s Office.”
About two months later, after an assistant state attorney spoke with the alleged victim and reviewed investigative records, the case was closed.
“[Law enforcement] was not able to corroborate any of the victim’s story,” the prosecutor noted. “Even if he had, driving past the victim’s house 3 times does not constitute a stalking.”
A police department representative said the agency recommended misdemeanor charges based on statements made by the victim and a witness.
“(The) Winter Garden Police Department received sworn testimony from the victim of being stalked over a two-year period by the suspect,” a spokesperson told News 6. “The victim’s daughter provided supporting testimony to the case. The victim stated she was in fear after the incident.”
“No proof” suspect forged signature on property deed
In March 2022, William Flanigan discovered someone had forged his signature on a property deed and recorded it with the Orange County Comptroller.
The fraudulent document made it appear as if Flanigan had sold a vacant lot he owned in West Orange County.
“I was hoping to build a home there soon,” Flanigan told News 6 at the time.
Later, a man posing as the new owner of Flanigan’s property spoke on the phone with a real estate broker and attempted to sell the land to an unsuspecting buyer.
The fraudulent property sale was halted before any money was wired to the imposter.
“I was infuriated,” said Flanigan. “The criminal mind is so baffling to me.”
Flanigan filed a report with the Ocoee Police Department, which launched an investigation into the forgery.
A detective quickly identified a potential suspect by running the imposter’s phone number through several public record databases, including U.S. Phonebook.
When the detective tried to speak with the potential suspect, investigators said the man hung up the phone.
Investigators also attempted to learn more about an email address used in the property fraud scheme, but the agency said Yahoo failed to respond to a subpoena sent via certified mail.
Despite not making an arrest, Ocoee Police forwarded its findings to Worrell’s office.
“This is a felony fraud case,” a spokesperson for the Ocoee Police Department told News 6 in response to questions for this story. “Sometimes we send cases like this to the State Attorney’s Office to determine if they want to move forward with charges”.
Notes from the state attorney’s case management system indicate a prosecutor tried to get additional information from Ocoee Police to potentially file criminal charges for forgery, uttering a forgery, and unlawfully filing a false document against real property.
“Right now, there’s nothing I can file on,” an assistant state attorney wrote in a May 2023 email to the detective. “I have a forged document, but no proof that [the named defendant] forged it. I don’t have a statement from the clerk that accepted the forged document (that’s needed for the Uttering Forgery charge) and I don’t have any witness statements that identify [the defendant] as the preparer of the document or as the person who presented the forged doc to the clerk.”
The prosecutor sent another email to the detective two weeks later.
“Where are we on this?” she asked. “Are you making any headway, or should I close the file? Please let me know what’s up.”
After another week went by, the assistant state attorney entered one final note in the case management system.
“I’ve had no response from [the detective],” she wrote. “File is a year and a half old, and I’ve not received any additional evidence to support charging. Closing case.”
After this story published, a spokesperson for Worrell confirmed economic crimes similar to this forgery case would still be accepted under her office’s new policy related to non-arrests.
Homicides, sex crimes, child abuse, and drug trafficking are among other offenses the state attorney will review without law enforcement first making an arrest or issuing a notice to appear in court, according to the policy.