A former landscaping worker with apparent insider knowledge of golf maintenance operations was taken into custody following a series of high-dollar equipment thefts in The Villages.
Ryan John Kelly, 28, a Massachusetts native who lives at the Sundance Trails apartment complex in Wildwood, is facing multiple felony counts including grand theft and burglary of an unoccupied structure. Kelly is a former employee of Brightview, a large landscaping company in The Villages.
The primary incident took place on August 20 and 21 at the Belle Glade Championship Golf Course’s ASG Solutions golf maintenance facility.
According to a Sumter County Sheriff’s Office arrest report, employees arriving for work at the Basso Run plant saw a green Turfco top dresser abandoned on a golf cart road.
Staff quickly discovered that the top dresser had been separated from a Toro Workman HDX Series utility truck worth $10,000, which was taken from an open storage carport.
The facility’s electrical breakers were completely turned off, indicating insider knowledge. A surveillance camera near the storage room had also been purposefully angled upward to avoid capturing the act. Investigators discovered that a universal Toro key was allegedly critical in letting the suspect to readily start and escape with the specialist equipment.
Kelly is also accused of being involved in a later theft that took place overnight between August 23 and August 24 at another storage facility. In that case, a 2018 Carryall Turf 2 golf cart with an attached irrigation sprayer was taken from within a locked building. The criminal once again altered the external electrical breaker switch to turn off the facility’s electricity before the heist.
During the inquiry, deputies discovered latent fingerprints on the breaker switches and seized a mechanic’s glove discarded near the bay door.
On August 26, police arrived at Kelly’s condo at 5095 Spanish Harbor Drive in Wildwood as part of their investigation. Upon arrival, deputies discovered the stolen Toro Workman parked just in front of Kelly’s ground-floor unit. Dispatchers determined that the serial number matched the utility vehicle stolen from the Belle Glade facility.
Kelly was taken into the Sumter County Detention Center on multiple counts of burglary and grand theft. He was released after posting a $60,000 bond.
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