Lorain/Elyria, OH
Accused killer cleared of robbery by GPS
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LORAIN - A GPS monitoring device has cleared an accused killer of robbing a Sheffield Township woman earlier this month while he was free on bond in a murder case.
Andrew Lorenzana was freed Tuesday from Lorain County Jail, where he had been held since his arrest in the hours following the May 10 robbery, said his attorney, Anthony Rich.
He had been facing aggravated robbery and aggravated burglary charges for the robbery, in which the woman said masked men claiming to be police officers forced their way into her home and held her at gunpoint while they searched for drugs and cash. Prosecutors have dropped those charges, according to court records.
When Lorenzana, 19, was arrested, he told police he was wearing a monitoring device that tracked his movements and urged officers to check it. Rich said he was pleased the authorities moved quickly to check what his client said.
“They`re not going to charge somebody for a crime he didn`t commit,” he said.
County Prosecutor Dennis Will said the charges were dropped after preliminary information showed Lorenzana wasn`t at the robbery scene.
But the preliminary GPS reports indicate that Avery Taylor, who also was free on a $50,000 bond after being charged in connection with the Feb. 3 shooting death of Christopher Lundberg in Lorain, was there, Will said.
“Avery can`t make the same argument that Mr. Lorenzana has,” he said.
Taylor, 19, has pleaded not guilty to the robbery charges, and that case has been bound over for consideration by a county grand jury. Taylor remains in the county jail.
Rich said if Lorenzana hadn`t been wearing the GPS device, he would likely still be in jail. The victim in the robbery identified him as one of the robbers.
Rich said witnesses` accounts can be extremely unreliable and have led to innocent people being convicted of crimes they didn`t commit.
“We`re happy with the result, but it`s scary,” Rich said.
Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.
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I know someone that was wearing one of those things and when they wanted to leave the house they put a heavy jacket over the “box” thing that was in the house and went out there merry way laughing about it.
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They might as well release the other one, her eye witness testimony is now worthless.
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@JMB…
They won’t need her testimony against Taylor. The GPS around his ankle proved he was there…
@boomboom…
“…they put a heavy jacket over the “box†thing that was in the house and went out there merry way …”
Right, because we all know a heavy jacket blocks radio waves. Besides, with the house arrest units (sounds like that’s what your ’someone’ (everyone has a ’someone’ that beats the system, right?) was supposedly wearing), if the device loses contact with the base station, alarms start going off then calls get placed and the police start looking for you…
But in this case I believe these GPS units store the data internally. The bases for this type may download the GPS data once a day and send it to the monitoring company.
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EER71
I guess I should learn to read.
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@JMB…
You couldn’t imagine how many times I have drafted a post to go back and re-read something that completely blows my argument… Sometimes I feel like the Gilda Radner SNL character ‘Emily Litelle’ (see Wikipedia if you don’t know her). “Never Mind…” (lol)
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I know Gilda..
Whats all this uproar over endangered feces?
Oh, it was endangered species… Never mind!
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LOL…
And why do we have a deaf penalty? Don’t deaf people have it hard enough already?
What? DEATH penalty? Never Mind…
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