New Orleans man admits daringly hitting and grabbing eight dirt bikes at Mobile dealership

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) – A New Orleans man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to participating in a theft ring that was responsible for a daring crash in the early hours that reported eight high-performance dirt bikes.

Jerrell Maxon pleaded guilty to interstate transportation in stolen vehicles.

Court records say police used cellphone data, the defendant’s recorded phone calls from jail, web browsing history and even a FOX10 News ‘Caught in the Act’ segment to mount her case against him.

Mobile police responded to a burglary at Hall’s Motorsports on the Interstate 65 service route before 3 a.m. on May 1, 2018. Later that day, police also discovered that the U-Haul store on West I- 65 Service Road South had been broken into. .

Surveillance video shows several people wearing gloves and face coverings entering the U-Haul store around 1 a.m., starting a pair of Ford E-450 Box trucks and ramming the door

According to court records, a U-Haul smashed through the front of the Hall’s motorsports business. Video shows nine people wearing face coverings and hats walked inside and stole eight motorcycles, placing them in the second U-Haul truck. Police later found two of the motorcycles, which had apparently fallen from the truck, in the business area.

Investigators later located three of the motorcycles and one of the trucks in the New Orleans area. The second truck ended up in Mobile and authorities never found the other three motorcycles.

The burglaries caused $110,093 in damages to Hall’s Motorsports, and the value of the three unrecovered motorcycles was $17,376, according to court records. Damage to U-Haul totaled $147,795.

Investigators used cellphone information to place Maxon and co-defendant Tim Jackson in Mobile at the time of the burglaries.

In May, law enforcement officers searched Jackson’s home on D’Hemecourt Street in New Orleans and found a motorcycle that had been reported stolen in Lafayette, Louisiana the previous March.

“A photo of a shoe rack in JACKSON’s bedroom revealed a pair of shoes that stood out and was highly visible,” Maxon’s plea agreement reads. “They had a reddish color on the vamp (high above the toes), the tongue of the shoe, and white stripes on the quarter (sides) of the shoes. The shoes matched the shoes of one of the subjects of the Hall’s Motosports burglary in Mobile.

A search of Maxon’s phone resulted in multiple searches of dirt bike dealers in Alabama in the days leading up to the robbery, according to his plea deal. The plea document also says Maxon searched for “al mobile burglaries” and “mobile news” on the day of the robbery.

The day after the burglary, Maxon sent someone a link to a FOX10 News “Caught in the Act” segment about the Hall’s Motorsports burglary, according to his plea agreement.

Investigators have determined that photos on Maxon’s phone depicting motorcycles compatible with those stolen from Mobile were taken while the cellphone was several feet from his home.

Maxon then told law enforcement officers that he sold one of the motorcycles to a Houston resident for $1,500, according to the plea document. A search of his home on Lancelot Drive in New Orleans the same day revealed handwritten notes on motorcycle shops in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

Maxon also made incriminating statements in phone conversations jailers recorded while he was locked up.

“They got an indictment against me because I’m the one hitting businesses all over the South and (expletive) like that,” he told a woman, according to the plea agreement.

The plea document says he told the woman he was considering a long jail term because he took her “lick.” When the woman asked if he had told investigators he had committed the burglaries, he replied: ‘Yes, I took my lick. It was that or bring everyone down.

Jackson, the co-defendant, is due to stand trial next month.

Copyright 2022 WALA. All rights reserved.