Man arrested for illegally dumping Hurricane Ian debris in Rotonda West

A man was arrested Monday afternoon in Englewood East after deputies say he illegally dumped Hurricane Ian debris on a street in Rotonda West.

According to the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office, 28-year-old Joshua Allan Dove was arrested after deputies went to a home on Leisure Place in Rotonda West in response to an illegal dumping complaint. A 450-cubic-foot pile of waste building materials, furniture and miscellaneous household trash had been dumped in front of the home. Amid the waste, deputies found an expired credit card belonging to a woman who lives on Jennifer Drive in Rotonda West.

Deputies went to a home on Lilyan Court to speak with the witness of the incident. The man said he saw an older model gray Jeep towing a utility trailer loaded with waste building materials driving on his street. A man in his late 20s or early 30s with a beard and mustache, wearing a Dove Landscaping Service t-shirt, dumped the waste items from the trailer onto the ground. The witness confronted the man and told him he shouldn’t be dumping in his neighborhood, but the man told the witness the axle on his trailer was messed up, and he needed to unload the trailer and get it fixed. The man said he would come back and clean it up when his trailer was fixed.

After around a month, it was obvious the man had no intention of returning to pick up the debris. The witness had taken a picture of the Jeep’s license plate at the time, and deputies were able to find revealed a gray 2000 Jeep registered to Joshua A. Dove.

The woman who owned the expired credit card found in the waste told deputies that on Nov. 21, she paid Dove $130 to haul away furniture and waste building materials that were damaged during Hurricane Ian. Dove hauled two loads and was gone for around 30 minutes between loads. The woman identified pictures of the waste items dumped at Leisure Place as the same debris Dove loaded on his trailer, and she confirmed a picture of Dove as the same man she had hired.

When confronted at his Englewood East home, Dove confessed to dumping the debris he removed from the woman’s residence.

Dove was arrested and transported to the Charlotte County Jail. He faces a charge of felony litter law.