Spring Break Mall Findings - 4/17/08

Site Admin Joined: 19 Jan 2008 Posts: 456

Spring Break Personal Findings

*Sigh*
Last week was a busy week for me, in the respect that I spent a good portion of it on the buses trying to visit as many Simon properties as time would allow. I also visited the Lawton Chiles memorial park and the Home Depot where Randi Gorenberg's body and SUV were dumped, respectively.
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On 4/5, I visited "Downtown At The Gardens," an outside mall about a stone's throw from the Gardens Mall. According to a friend of mine, it's about 2 years old, so it's a pretty new place.

They only chose to post the english version of the reward poster, single-sided, in 4 out of 7 exits. The exits by Urban Outfitters and The Grape were not covered by signs to make people aware of this case. Also, in the Cobb Theater's entrance, only one side of that exit was covered.
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April 7 was my busiest day of the break. I spent most of it walking around Delray Beach, trying to cover Randi Gorenberg's case and see what I could find on my own.

I walked up West Atlantic and found the bus stop sign dedicated to her part of this case (photos in the gallery). I proceeded to walk up to W. Atlantic and Jog Road to visit the Home Depot where the SUV was ditched in the back. Along this walk, I noticed several things:
1. There is an entrance to a housing development (King's Point, possibly?) in the back on the other side of the pond behind the Home Depot.
2. It is very busy traffic-wise back there, due to the fools who wish to avoid sitting at the intersection's light, so it is a straight-shot down behind that Home Depot plaza and you can exit right out on West Atlantic and get away in a split second. You can NOT tell me that in the late afternoon, there were NO witnesses to this animal leaving the scene in some kind of getaway vehicle that he either had tracking him (as seen in the video) or had parked behind there. Witnesses, where ARE you?!?
3. There was what appeared to be an empty surveillance camera bracket on the back corner of the Home Depot building (see photo gallery). You honestly mean to tell me that HD forgot to re-camera the back side of their store?! This fool HAD to have known this, or this would not have been the spot he chose to dump the vehicle. What IF there had been a camera back there in that bracket? Would we have gotten a clear picture of this monster? Would he be in custody by now?
4. It happened on March 23, 2007... it was light out at the time this took place. It's not like this guy was doing all of this in the dark.
5. Police barricades... still sitting on the edge of the lake (see photo gallery). Is there still a reason for this?

After visiting the Home Depot, I walked the two miles to the Lawton Chiles Memorial Park because no buses go down that road. I sat and took a break, all the while wondering how such a busy civic center could reveal so few details about something so brazen as a gunshot-related murder in broad daylight. The park is VERY small and the pavilion where the witnesses were is a mere few feet away from the spot where Randi was shot and shoved from her SUV. I cannot fathom how we do not have this monster in custody by now. He messed up on SO many levels, yet we don't have him.

I walked back another two miles and took the bus to the Boynton Beach Mall and did a quick survey of their signs. They were actually INTELLIGENT at this mall. Color me shocked and amazed that, not only were there double-sided signs posted and that they were in BOTH English AND Spanish, but the exit by the bus stop (arguably the busiest one) had the posters posted on either side of the snack and drink vending machines! They were also bolted to the wall and had plastic covering over them. All three of their major exits were covered.

The only thing I wasn't thrilled with was seeing one of the security officers on a segway (WTF?!) and yapping on the phone. But overall, I saw three security officers inside the mall, and one patrolling the outside in a car.
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On the 8th, I went to Boca Raton and into Broward County to see if I could find the billboard that there was money raised for back in February. I had no such luck. One day really soon, I'm going to try again. But aside from coming up short on that, there was a GREAT Dunkin' Donuts and a meat shoppe beside it that both had the Reward poster in their windows. I wrote an email to DD, and let them know how happy I was to see this in their establishment.

Now, I reported this two days after the fact, but I took a different bus back toward the Town Center Mall out of my wanting to find the billboard. Well, on our way through this parking lot and by a Home Depot, I glanced out of the right side of the bus and saw a scary face... it looked JUST LIKE the man in the poster! After a little bit of thought (due to my not wanting to be stranded so far from home), I finally got off of the bus about ten minutes later and ran back to the Home Depot.

I want you ALL to know that I tried to call AMW and Crimestoppers, to which I got NO ANSWER ON EITHER NUMBER. I didn't have Boca PD's number with me (didn't expect to need it), and the guy I was doing the website for who's fallen off of the face of the planet never responded to my text. My phone was almost dead, so it was probably going to cut out on my next REAL phone call. So I sat there, waiting for the next bus, watching this guy load mulch into a woman's car. He clearly worked for HD (is this making any sense to those of you who have been following the case?!) and here's the description I wrote down as I remembered it (pays to ALWAYS carry a notebook and pen):

- Between mid-20's and early 30's
- He was tall - between 5'10 and 6' tall
- Wore a blue shirt with a collar -- polo? Had buttons in front
- He had a big build -- I'd describe him as a "hulking" figure. Not overweight, but big enough to be intimidating.
- He had dark blond hair, which was cut short
- He was wearing a tan floppy hat with a drawstring
- He wore black gloves
- Wore blue jeans
- Wore sneakers -- white
- He wore sunglasses that shine different colors, shaped just like the ones in the initial sketch that was released.

I did manage to snag two not-very-good photos of him on my cell phone. I will upload them here when I'm done with this blog entry. It frightened me THAT much that this might just be the guy. What frightens me even more is that I emailed the Boca PD two days later -- complete with the pictures -- and have not heard back from them yet.
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I took a couple of days for myself after this major scare, but got right back on the horse on April 12 by returning to Boca Raton and then making the long bus ride back to the north end to document the Palm Beach Mall.

Boca Town Center Mall:

There were a total of 11 signs in the Boca Mall. All of them were in english AND one-sided.

The exit that Nancy, Joey AND Randi all used is NOT covered in ANY way, especially the weekends. You would think that if they wanted to claim that security was "beefed up," they'd have service at the kiosk on the weekends. They're even asking for volunteers (see 4/12 TCM Photos in the gallery)!! Just more proof that you truly can't find a cop when you need one. To add to the mass confusion that is the new layout of the Town Center Mall, the new police liason office isn't complete... it's "coming soon" to the new wing. Where at, exactly? The second floor. Ah yes. So much for running in on the ground floor really quickly and saying "I need your help!" Now we'll have to wait for an elevator or travel up and down a flight of stairs while the loser gets away. Good thinking!! Of course, I DO hope that there will at LEAST be a police officer there on the weekends, unlike the kiosk clear across the mall!

There was also NO WANTED SIGN at the Sears/Neiman Marcus exit that Nancy, Joey and Randi all used. It's in the corridor up by Old Navy, not even facing toward the exit. You would think that THE exit where this loser is getting his prey would be covered by more than one security camera and a Wanted Poster?! Nah. They're more insistant upon blocking the kiosk with a giant ad billboard that's advertising a watch instead of posting a bus-stop-sign-size poster of Nancy and Joey and Randi on one side and of the loser's Wanted poster on the other side. Corporate America... gotta love it.... NOT!

For a mall that was supposed to have installed a barrage of new security cameras, I guess that most of them are hidden well, because I sure didn't see them.

I saw two officers and one security person in the food court. No segways this time around... thank goodness.

I walked out to the buses and took a walk by the parking garage and should have gone into it, but I saw enough from the outside to know that the results weren't good. I only saw one camera underneath (there might have been more, but I didn't see any) and two up on top (can be seen from the bus stop).

I was also told by a close friend of mine upon return from spring break that they went to TCM over break and that they parked in the parking garage near an emergency call box on purpose just in case, and she saw that it was missing, that it had been pulled out of the wall and that others she saw had trash bags over them and were also out of order.

At the Palm Beach Mall, which is going out of business next year (sad, because I used to LOVE that mall, but it has become slumtown-USA since I was little), They had all four major exits covered by double-sided english-version signs. The only complaint I have is that the one in the food court isn't visible on one side due to a plant and a job-search machine.

There was also only one security guard to be seen.

So those are my findings, and this is my Spring Break report. Thanks for reading. I'll hopefully be able to report on the Broward and Miami/Dade malls sometime in the near future.