MELBOURNE, Fla. – A naked Florida man stole a pickup truck from a dealership, leading police on a pursuit early Wednesday in Melbourne, according to police.
Melbourne police said Richard Blose, 40, was at Fiat of Melbourne before 7 a.m. when an employee saw him standing naked in a paint booth before the man got into a 2021 Ram truck. Blose then backed out of the booth in the pickup truck and drove off from the dealership, police said.
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The Melbourne Police Department said surveillance video showed Blose at the dealership just before 5 a.m. wearing only underwear, walking around the business, getting into another car and sitting on its roof for 30 minutes before stealing the Ram.
Once police contacted the truck’s owner, officers were able to track the truck and located it going north on Interstate 95. The department said an officer in an unmarked vehicle saw the truck “driving erratic” and striking a guardrail multiple times. Officers said the truck exited in Cocoa before authorities were able to stop Blose and take him into custody.
Blose made his first court appearance Thursday at the Brevard County Jail where he was denied bond.
Neighbors on Longbow Road, where the arrest was made, said Blose has a habit of losing his clothes. He was out on bond on a charge of exposing himself just last month.
He’s been to the Brevard County Jail a total of 12 times in the last three years.
‘’We want him out of the neighborhood because we have young kids and teenagers here,’’ Kenneth Richmond said. ‘’We don’t need him stripping as he has been.’’
According to a report, Blose told officers he did not steal the truck and “someone in a red shirt told him to take it.”
Police said Blose is on felony probation and faces new charges of unoccupied burglary to a structure, unoccupied burglary to a conveyance, grand theft of a motor vehicle, criminal mischief, violation of probation, driving with a suspended license and leaving the scene of an accident with property damage.