GAINESVILLE, Fla. – A judge has ordered a man accused of stealing an excavator and running it into several buildings to undergo a mental health evaluation before he can be released on bail.
Jesse Charles Smith, 47, of Trenton, Florida, was arrested late Monday in Gainesville. Police accused him of hot-wiring a construction excavator and crashing into buildings, including a Walmart, in the popular Butler Plaza shopping district on the city’s west side. Police said Smith was armed with a machete when he entered the Walmart but discarded it before they arrested him.
Smith remains in the county jail, subject to a new order for a mental health evaluation by Alachua County Senior Judge Peter K. Sieg. His bail is set at $160,000.
Smith’s jail photo showed him wearing a specialized uniform that restricts his movement. A spokesman for the sheriff’s office, Art Forgey, said Smith was under close observation to prevent him from hurting himself. Forgey said Smith has a history of mental illness.
“We had concerns that he might be a danger to himself,” Forgey said.
Smith is facing four felony charges of damage to property that exceeded $1,000, plus felonies of grand theft, armed trespass and resisting an officer without violence. Deputies said the businesses estimated the total damage at $2 million.
Smith has not yet hired or been appointed a defense lawyer.
Smith has a long history of theft and burglary convictions in Alachua County, dating back to 2018. He served just over one year in a Florida prison until this January, when he was released about four months earlier than expected, according to a review of criminal court records.
Smith’s convictions included cases where sheriff's deputies said he admitted stealing hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of power tools and equipment from individuals or businesses – including a man who had let him stay at his house – then pawning them.
The only explanation Smith ever offered to investigators was that he needed money for drugs and to take care of his girlfriend, court records showed. In another case, deputies said, he admitted stealing a laptop from a woman's car as she was refueling at a gas station and sold it.
Just before he entered prison, in December 2021, prosecutors dropped two separate criminal cases against Smith without explanation. Those crimes involved the theft of $2,500 in tools from a work truck and the theft of a $279 trimmer from a hardware store, taken from the same shopping district as the excavator incident.
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