An Illinois license plate on a golf cart found submerged in a pond on Friday helped lead Lady Lake police to a burglary suspect.
The expired Illinois license on the EZ-GO golf cart that was towed from the pond on the Historic Side of The Villages, led police to Michael Wayne Hawk, 46, who resides at 1310 Debra Drive in the Village of Orange Blossom Gardens.
Other clues left behind in the golf cart were a pink flashlight, a mini pry bar and a necklace with a tag engraved with “Michael,” according to an arrest report released Monday.
The Illinois plate was tracked to Joyce Hawk, who died in December after a battle with cancer. She had lived with her husband Otto in the Village of Amelia. The tax bill for the home on Debra Drive is mailed to the Hawks’ home in Amelia, according to records with the Lake County Property Appraiser’s Office.
When police went to Michael Hawk’s home on Debra Drive, he told them that he hadn’t let anyone borrow his golf cart and that no one had been in his home other than his live-in girlfriend. He gave police a golf cart key on a mini red flashlight that he said he found on his kitchen counter when he woke up. He also gave them permission to search his home. Police found a Panasonic flatscreen TV in the lanai and next to it, a freshly wet T-shirt.
Police were investigating a burglary at a newly constructed home on Silver Oak Avenue in the nearby Village of Silver Lake. The items found in Hawk’s home matched the items said to be missing from the home. The key Hawk said he had found on his kitchen counter fit in the ignition of a Yamaha golf cart at the home on Silver Oak Avenue which had been burglarized.
Hawk, who is unemployed according to the arrest report, was arrested on charges of grand theft and burglary. He was booked at the Lake County Jail on $7,000.
