A carjacking suspect who tampered with an ankle monitor was apprehended after weeks on the run.
A carjacking suspect who reportedly led police on a pursuit that ended in a rollover crash in Miami Beach and then fled for weeks after tampering with his ankle monitor is back in custody, according to officials. Savalas Cigar was booked into a Miami-Dade jail on Thursday, many weeks after going missing while on house arrest, according to documents.
Cigar began house arrest on September 14 after being confined in jail since August 12. On September 17, the Miami-Dade County Corrections and Rehabilitation Department reported that he set off a tamper alert on his ankle and vanished. Details about how or where he was discovered were not immediately available. Cigar, 46, is charged with grand theft, evading, and aggravated dodging a police officer after allegedly carjacking a woman and leading a pursuit that culminated in a rollover incident in Miami Beach on August 11. The woman told NBC6 she was parking her SUV in Miami when a man approached her for money. When she told the man she didn’t have any money, he approached her with a hammer and threatened her, she claims.
“I was shaking because the guy had threatened me with a hammer,” Glenda Defas explained. “(I said) ‘You’re going to kill yourself for this, and you’ll destroy my life?'” The victim walked away, but the man entered her SUV moments later and drove away. Her sibling, who is disabled and deaf, was inside the vehicle but exited as the stranger entered. “My brother came running and said, Glenda, the guy took the car,” she told me. “After seven years of paying for this car, I had no more payments, and this happened…” “I feel hopeless and destroyed.” Weeks later, Rita Case, CEO of Rick Case Automotive, agreed to give her a car after witnessing her tale on NBC6.
