Two men from Miami were arrested and charged with trying to hunt in a state park in Indian River County, law enforcement officials said.
Tomas Linares Cosme, 51, and Luis Mario Gomez Hernandez, 58, were arrested May 29 and charged with attempting to hunt in a state park, along with 10 other civil citations, according to an Indian River County Sheriff’s Office news release.
Around 1:51 a.m. May 29, Linares Cosme and Gomez Hernandez were arrested near Buffer Preserve Drive within the St. Sebastian River Preserve State Park after a three-hour search. The road is in the northwestern part of Indian River County, extending into Fellsmere.
The state park is in both Indian River and Brevard counties, and is designed around protecting the natural surroundings of the St. Sebastian River, according to its website.
“The Sheriff’s Office helicopter flew for several hours looking for these individuals… but it was unable to locate them,” sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Kevin Jaworski said.
Night vision goggles allowed deputies and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers to spot the men within the thick buffer vegetation without being discovered, according to Jaworski.
The arrest was made by the state wildlife officers as part of a three-month-long ongoing investigation, Jaworski said.
“FWC has been suspecting that people were out there illegally hunting, so this is why you’ve had a multi-agency response,” Jaworski said. “This is the first time that we were able to actually find them and catch them in that huge amount of land.”
Linares Cosme and Gomez Hernandez were not in possession of any game when arrested. However, deputies confiscated large hunting knives, and four tracking dogs that were taken by Indian River County Animal Control officers to the Humane Society of Vero Beach and Indian River County.
At the St. Sebastian River Preserve, illegal saw palmetto berry picking is more common than illegal hunting, according to Jaworski, who said he hasn’t seen many trespassing incidents related to hunting in the area.
“They purposely came up here and they parked their car in a gas station and walked in, so they didn’t drive into the preserve,” Jaworski said. “They made a conscious effort to conceal their vehicle and enter before being caught.”
Gomez Hernandez was released from the Indian River County Jail on May 29 on $150 bail while Linares Cosme remained in the same jail with a $150 bail, according to the jail’s website.
Representatives from the Northeast Regional FWC office did not respond to multiple attempts for information.
No other information was available.
Adrian Jimenez-Morales is a reporter for TCPalm/ Treasure Coast Newspapers. You can reach him at adrian.jimenez@tcpalm.com.
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Two Florida men charged with attempted illegal hunting in state park
Reporting by Adrian Jimenez Morales, Treasure Coast Newspapers / Treasure Coast Newspapers
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