Florida man mistaken for fugitive with his name, age spends 5 days in jail
A South Florida man had to spend nearly a week in jail this month when he was mistaken for a fugitive.
Leonardo Silva Oliveira, 26, a cook at a Deerfield Beach restaurant with no criminal record was behind bars for five days after he was arrested last Thursday as authorities believed him to be fugitive Leonardo Silva Oliveira, just 10 days older, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Wednesday.
The latter Oliveira was wanted for violating probation on charges of grand theft and burglary of an unoccupied dwelling in Boca Raton, the Sun-Sentinel reports.
While the men also share vague facial similarities, authorities knew that Oliveira, the fugitive, had tattoos and that Brazil-born Oliveira, the cook, did not. Even so, they “still took me in,” the latter told the paper.
It took days before authorities bothered to compare the fingerprints of both men.
“How could I be wanted on a probation violation when I’ve never been arrested for anything?” said Oliveira, the cook, who at 150 pounds, weighs far less than his fugitive doppelgänger did at 213 pounds during his 2017 arrest.
“I don’t want this to happen to anyone else,” said Oliveira, the cook. “I don’t want it to happen to me again! Do I have to change my name so that it doesn’t?”
With a surname common in Brazil, the innocent Oliveira did what he could to convince people he was who he said he was before the fingerprints provided the key, according to the paper.
The arrest report from Coconut Creek Police says Oliveira, the cook, was identified as the criminal in Florida’s driver and vehicle information database — despite the incorrect birthday — and officials are now trying to determine what led to the mix-up.
