When Cameron Briody, a bartender at Irish Kevin’s on Duval Street in Key West, Fla., saw the face on a webcam video, he recognized who it belonged to immediately.
It's hard to forget the face of a man who keeps you busy making three drinks and fails to leave a tip.
Why was the bad tipper’s face in a video circulating online? Well, after he left Irish Kevin’s on New Year’s Eve, the man – identified by police as 21-year-old Skylar Jacobson of Henrietta, Tex., according to the Miami Herald – allegedly vandalized a beloved Key West landmark along with David B. Perkins Jr., 22, of Leesburg, Fla.
They told police they were just in Key West for a day.
In their short time there, the two men reportedly burned a pine tree next to the Southernmost Point buoy, scarring the large concrete installation that marks the southernmost point of the continental U.S. They now each face a felony charge of criminal mischief with more than $1,000 in damage.
City workers finished repairs on the buoy at the end of last week, said the Herald.
Perkins was booked into the county jail on Plantation Key in the Upper Keys Friday and released in a couple of hours without having to post a bond, according to online records from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. Jacobson also has plans to turn himself in, according to Key West police spokeswoman Alyson Crean.
“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 of Jacobson in an interview with the Herald via Facebook message.
Daylin Starks, the bar’s general manager, remembered him for a different reason.
“His outfit was just so horrible it was hard not to remember him,” Starks said of the young man’s long baggy shorts, dark T-shirt, tall black socks and backwards baseball cap.
After Briody told Starks he recognized Jacobson in the video, they started hunting for more clues.
“We have a ton of cameras here,” Starks said. “Because Cameron remembered everything, it was super easy for me.”
First, they went through the credit cards to find Jacobson’s bill. Going off the time stamp from the receipt, they were able to find him in their camera footage.
“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.”
They were also able to track down Jacobson’s social media accounts.
“This is a great example of the partnership the Key West Police Department shares with the community,” said Key West Police Chief Sean Brandenburg. “Between the people who provided the video, the officers and detectives who worked quickly to identify the suspects and the tip by Mr.
Briody, this highlights community policing at its best.”
For his efforts, Briody has been rewarded with a case of rum.
Paul Menta, who owns a rum distillery in downtown Key West, had promised the case to the person who could help police identify who vandalized the buoy.
“There’s a lesson for you: always tip your bartender or he will remember you, for the good reasons or the bad reasons,” Briody said in a Facebook video with Menta and Key West author David Sloan.
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