Trial starts Monday for 3 men charged in Naples-Orlando home robberies
Three Immokalee men accused of committing a string of home invasions in Collier County and the Orlando area in 2014 are set to go to trial Monday in the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court in Orlando.
Andres Perez, 47, Henry Contreras, 51, and his son, Johnathan Contreras, 30, each face a slew of felony charges, including home invasion robbery, kidnapping with intent to commit a felony, carjacking with a firearm and armed burglary of a conveyance with a firearm.
The trio were arrested in May 2014 in connection with a home invasion in Windermere and an attempted home invasion in the Orlando area.
Related stories:
- Two men returned to Collier County to face combined 41 charges for home invasion burglaries
- Home invasion suspects moved to Naples from Orlando
- Five men face 114 felony charges stemming from Southwest Florida home invasion spree
- Home invasion suspect Andres Perez has long rap sheet of theft, burglary arrests
- Home invasion suspect Johnathan Contreras had run afoul of the law in recent months
Authorities also arrested a fourth suspect, Frank Bower Jr., 57, of Oviedo, and linked him to the crimes. But Bower's case could be delayed until a medical expert can testify on his behalf.
In a motion to suppress filed last April, lawyers for Bower wrote that during his interrogation following his arrest, he "was promised medication, as long as he acquiesced to the interrogation."
In an affidavit for arrest warrant, detectives wrote that Bower, after receiving his Miranda warning, told investigators that he participated in the Windermere home invasion and that Perez was the leader of the group.
Bower's attorney also filed a motion for continuance and a motion to sever in April, asking for more time so the medical expert can testify and requesting for Bower to be tried separately.
"The need for additional time is not for the purpose of delay, but rather to allow the Defendant to present testimony crucial to his defense," the motion stated.
Following the May 2014 arrests, investigators said they identified links between the suspects and a rash of home invasions in Collier that stretched from December 2013 into April 2014, stoked fear among residents, and eventually spilled over into Hendry and Orange counties.
Prosecutors in Collier, where the group may be tried for the crimes committed there at a later date, linked the men to eight home invasions and one attempted burglary in Florida, court documents show.
The group would often enter homes through unlocked doors, hold the occupants at gunpoint and bind them, in some cases using duct tape, and break their phones so they couldn't immediately call for help, authorities said. Orlando media outlets referred to the suspects in the Windermere home invasion case as "ninja robbers" because they were masked and dressed in black.
When Orange County sheriff's deputies arrested Perez, the younger Contreras and Bower in May 2014 after spotting them using wire cutters to cut a hole into a chain-link fence at a lakefront mansion in Orlando, they found zip ties, duct tape and three handguns in their backpacks, according to an arrest affidavit. One of the guns had been stolen in Collier, the report stated.
A few days later, Collier deputies arrested Henry Contreras at a home in the 1000 block of Raulerson Road in Immokalee in connection with the Windermere home invasion and the attempted home invasion in Orlando.
Phone records analyzed by Naples police and later obtained from the Florida attorney general’s office indicated that the group was searching for top-dollar homes in Central Florida and Texas after seeing stories about themselves on the news.
Two days before the lakefront mansion in Windermere was robbed, Bower texted Henry Contreras telling him to “look up” the wealthy town outside Orlando. The day after the robbery, Bower thanked him, saying “it was a pleasure doing business with you” and making plans to divvy up their $12,000 profit, records show.
Authorities say the men also planned to rob a beachfront property in St. Petersburg in mid-May 2014, and Bower later told Orlando-area detectives that the group was responsible for three home invasions in Texas.
“There’s real good hunting right now in Texas,” Bower texted Johnathan Contreras on May 1, 2014. “Maybe we should go back to Texas for a quick one.”