DOCUMENT: Florida, Crime

Siblings Busted For Robbery Of Girl Scout

Cops: Cookie monsters stole $200 from 12-year-old

View Document

Cookie Monsters Nabbed

MARCH 4--A brother-sister duo is jailed on felony robbery charges in connection with the theft of a cash box from a Girl Scout who was selling cookies outside a Walmart in Florida.

Nicholas Delbrugge, 20, and Ashley Winters, 25, were collared last night and booked into the Volusia County jail. Delbrugge, locked up on $150,000 bond, was charged with robbery by sudden snatching, a felony, and petty theft. Winters, facing similar criminal counts, is being held in lieu of $50,000 bond.

According to police, the siblings ripped off Lacey Lee, 12, while she was stationed Sunday afternoon outside a Walmart in Deltona. The child told cops that a man and woman approached her table and that, “the female kept asking questions about the cookies.” The man, Lee recalled, “kept staring at the cash box,” which held about $200.

After then spending 30 minutes inside Walmart, police report, the duo exited the store. Because of the male suspect’s prior suspicious actions, Lee “held onto the metal cash box,” according to cops. But the man wrested the box from the child and ran off with the cookie sale proceeds, making his getaway in a car driven by his female cohort (who was with a young girl).

After distributing surveillance images of the suspects, investigators quickly identified Delbrugge and Winters as the alleged cookie monsters.

In addition to the duo’s grandfather identifying them as the individuals in the surveillance images, Winters’s husband contacted cops to say that his wife was the woman seen in the Walmart video (and that she was accompanied by the couple’s juvenile daughter).  

Delbrugge--whose rap sheet includes prior busts for battery, possession of drug paraphernalia, and marijuana possession--was picked out of a police lineup by Lee, a local middle school student. (2 pages)