A Fruitland Park woman was jailed Monday night after being accused of ripping off items from an Ocala Walmart.
A Marion County sheriff’s deputy responded to the store shortly before 7 p.m. and spoke with an asset protection officer who said that he had watched 26-year-old Kristen Nada Rogers on video surveillance as she failed to scan items at a checkout station. He said Rogers then exited the store with $58.91 worth of merchandise that she concealed inside Walmart shopping bags along with the items she had paid for, a sheriff’s office report states.
The deputy detained Rogers in handcuffs and after being read her rights, she admitted that she had been caught stealing about 12 years earlier. She expressed remorse and said she “simply was trying to save her mother some money because she was having a hard financial time,” the report says.
The deputy searched Rogers’ purse and located two small plastic baggies containing a clear rock-like substance that she admitted was methamphetamine, which was confirmed through a field test on the substance. Rogers was then placed under arrest and transported to the Marion County Jail, where she was charged with possession of a controlled substance (methamphetamine) and retail petit theft. She was released early Tuesday morning on $2,500 bond and her next court date hasn’t yet been set, jail records show.
Rogers is no stranger to the legal system. She was arrested in July 2019 in the Hacienda Villas with a Villager’s stolen car with Indiana license plates. The 2006 Pontiac G6 had been reported stolen from a home on Dominguez Drive in Villa De La Mesa.
Rogers also was arrested in June 2017 in The Villages when she was among a trio that was caught in a Jeep that had been reported stolen in Ocala. A Sumter County sheriff’s K-9 alerted on the vehicle during a traffic stop and Rogers was arrested and deputies reported finding an insulin-type syringe with what appeared to be blood on the needle and in the tip of the syringe. Deputies used a presumptive methamphetamine test kit to analyze the substance on the items and the substance tested positive for the presence of methamphetamine.
