February 19, 2009
Brandon Haught
Public Information Office

TRUCK DRIVERS NABBED AFTER $900 GAS DRIVE OFF 

Two Miami men topped off their semi-truck with more than $900 in diesel fuel Wednesday afternoon and then sped away without paying, but the truck stop manager wasn’t about to let them get away with it. The manager jumped in his vehicle and tracked the thieves from the Ormond Beach area all the way to the DeLand area. He flagged down a Volusia County Sheriff’s deputy there who then caught up with the truck. However, the men had abandoned their vehicle along the side of a road and took off on foot through the woods. A Sheriff’s Office K-9 unit sniffed them out, though, and the pair was apprehended and later booked into the Volusia County Branch Jail in Daytona Beach. 

A clerk at Love’s Truck Stop, 1657 N. U.S. Highway 1, told deputies that a man had offered a credit card to pay for gas his partner was pumping at about 4:30 p.m. The clerk grew suspicious as the gas kept pouring into the truck, eventually reaching 431 gallons. He asked a supervisor to go outside and copy down the truck’s license number. This apparently spooked the truck drivers. They quickly stopped pumping and prepared to leave. The clerk immediately ran the credit card he had been given, but it came back denied. He then looked outside and saw the thieves jump into their truck and drive away. That’s when he notified the store manager, who wasted no time getting into his own vehicle to follow the thieves. Meanwhile, the clerk called the Sheriff’s Office to report what had happened. 

A little less than an hour later, the store manager was still behind the truck as it headed toward DeLand and he found a deputy nearby to flag down. The deputy caught up to the truck and found it parked on the roadside near the intersection of State Road 44 and Eau Claire Avenue. The thieves had abandoned the truck and headed into the nearby woods. Deputies set up a perimeter and sent in a K-9 unit that found the men about ¼ mile from their truck. William Soriano, 26, was identified as the driver and the man who had handed the store clerk the credit card. Franky Soriano, 22, was identified as the truck passenger who had pumped the gas. Both men were charged with grand theft and resisting arrest without violence.