An Oak Meadows woman and a Weirsdale man are behind bars in the Marion County Jail after they were spotted Wednesday fleeing from an Ocala Wal-Mart with a shopping cart full of groceries.
A Marion County sheriff’s deputy was called to the store, located at 34 Bahia Ave., and when he arrived a loss prevention officer told him that a woman and man, later identified as 29-year-old Jessica Lydia Ambros and 49-year-old David Wallace Charles, had been confronted near the cash registers but ran out of the store with the groceries anyway. He said they loaded the items in the back of a silver car and alerted another deputy, who was in the parking lot, the report says.
Deputies then located the couple across the street at another business. They were wearing the same clothing as the suspects in surveillance video footage and had reusable Wal-Mart bags that were full of food and hygiene products valued at $286.65, the report says.
Ambros and Charles were then transported to the Marion County Jail, where they were both were charged with larceny/petit theft and held on $1,000 bond apiece. Both are due in court on Sept. 12 at 9:30 a.m. to answer to the charges.
Neither Ambros nor Charles are strangers to the legal system. In December 2018, Ambros, who lives at 716 Oak Ln. in Oak Meadows, was sentenced to 30 days in the Lake County Jail on a grand theft charge. She had been arrested in July 2018 at Target at Rolling Acres Plaza in The Villages and accused of taking video games and Nintendo switch controllers.
Wallace, who lives at 1920 Marion County Rd., Lot 112 in Weirsdale, also has had his share of run-ins with law enforcement. In fact, he has been held in the Marion County Jail 13 times since June 1991 on a litany of charges.
