{"id":158616,"date":"2026-02-17T17:39:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T17:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/158616\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T17:39:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T17:39:08","slug":"man-caught-trying-to-break-into-home-vehicles-in-hialeah-police-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/158616\/","title":{"rendered":"Man caught trying to break into home, vehicles in Hialeah, police say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text text--small text--normal text--primary\">Published:\u00a0February 17, 2026 at 12:12 PM<\/p>\n<p>Arrest report: Jeffrey Morton, 71, told cops he \u2018wanted a new truck\u2019lead-art-block.fullscreen-enterExpand<img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/U2OWGBF6VFDTRD22VZX7AIP2WM.jpg\"  width=\"912\" height=\"513\"\/>Photo Jeffrey Morton (MDCR\/Copyright 2026 Google) <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">HIALEAH, Fla. \u2014 A man was caught on video using a rock and a table to try to break into a Hialeah home early Monday morning, then trying to burglarize two vehicles, authorities say.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.local10.com\/espanol\/2026\/02\/17\/arrestan-a-hombre-sorprendido-intentando-entrar-a-casa-y-vehiculos-en-hialeah-segun-la-policia\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.local10.com\/espanol\/2026\/02\/17\/arrestan-a-hombre-sorprendido-intentando-entrar-a-casa-y-vehiculos-en-hialeah-segun-la-policia\/\">Leer en espa\u00f1ol<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">According to the Hialeah Police Department, the incident happened just after 1 a.m. in the 600 block of West 17th Street.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Investigators said a woman heard a \u201cloud banging\u201d and looked out her bedroom door to see a man, later identified as Jeffrey Willard Morton, 71, of Port St. Lucie, \u201csmashing the front lock of the residence with a large rock.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Police said Morton \u201cthen grabbed (a) small brown table (on) the front porch and used it to hit the front door of the property, causing damage to the front door deadbolt lock.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Authorities said Morton then tried to burglarize a panel van and an SUV before officers arrived.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">According to an HPD arrest report, when asked what he was doing, Morton told an officer that \u201che wanted a new truck.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Instead, Morton ended up in the back of a police cruiser after being taken into custody on one count of burglary of an occupied dwelling and two counts of burglary of an unoccupied conveyance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">As of Tuesday morning, he was being held in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center with a bond listed as \u201cto be set,\u201d according to online records.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83c\udfe0 News From Your Neighborhood<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-article-body__copyright\">Copyright 2026 by WPLG Local10.com &#8211; All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"Chris Gothner\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/https:\/\/author-service-images-sandbox-us-east-1.publishing.aws.arc.pub\/wplginc\/3be3b5ed-fb4b-43ce-8b.jpeg\"  width=\"100\" height=\"100\"\/>Chris Gothner <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-author-bio__author-description\">Chris Gothner joined the Local 10 News team in 2022 as a Digital Journalist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published:\u00a0February 17, 2026 at 12:12 PM Arrest report: Jeffrey Morton, 71, told cops he \u2018wanted a new truck\u2019lead-art-block.fullscreen-enterExpandPhoto&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[225,227,226],"class_list":["post-158616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}