After seeing surveillance footage of the vandalism, a bartender at a popular Key West establishment helped identify the culprits who set fire to the landmark buoy marker that denotes the southernmost point in the United States, the Miami Herald reports.
Cameron Briody, a bartender at the iconic Irish Kevin’s bar on Duval Street in Key West, recognized one of the two men caught on video lighting the Southernmost Point buoy on fire in the early morning hours on New Year’s Day. Briody worked with bar manager Daylin Starks to track down a name for the man, who had been drinking at the bar with a buddy earlier that evening and had left without leaving a tip for the staff.
Briody and Starks sorted through receipts from the night of the incident and identified the credit card receipts from 21-year-old Skylar Jacobson of Henrietta, Texas, who had ordered three drinks at the bar and didn’t leave a tip. “I knew immediately that I had served him and that he had used a card, so his name would be on the slips,” Briody said in an interview.
Briody alerted Starks, who searched through the credit card receipts from the night to identify Jacobson. She then went back through security footage at the bar. “We could follow them the whole time, in and out of the bar,” Starks said. “We could see them getting rejected from all the girls they were trying to hit on.”
David B. Perkins Jr., 22, of Leesburg, Florida was arrested Friday in Key West, and Jacobson has made arrangements to turn himself in. They each face a felony charge of criminal mischief with more than $1,000 in damage.