Blake Bortles helped thwart a would-be thief who tried to drive off in the Jaguars quarterback’s new pickup truck at a party this week in Jacksonville Beach, Fla., police said last week.
According to the Jacksonville Beach police report from the incident Wednesday night at Jags center Brandon Linder’s home: Joseph Horton, 18, rummaged through several vehicles at the party, including Bortles’ new Ford F-150, which was unlocked with the keys inside. Surveillance video showed Horton removing Bortles’ wallet from the truck. It later was recovered outside
Now we’re hearing exactly what happened from Blake himself. Crazy story. Listen below, and also swipe right to hear more.
“So we’re at offensive line dinner, which we do weekly all the time. It’s all the offensive linemen, and me and Cody Kessler, our other quarterback. We’re hanging out and we’re playing pool volleyball in his pool. It’s time to go — it’s 6:45-7 o’clock. I saw a TMZ article say it was a late night house party — like the sun was still up. It wasn’t even seven o’clock yet.
“Brandon Linder, our center whose house we were at, his buddy had come home, who lives there [who] nobody really knew, so it kind of desensitized people to a random guy walking in. I walk outside and my truck is turned around, facing the other way from how I parked it. I was kind of like ‘Man, this is weird.’ The first thing I thought of was we got some buddies who live in the area; somebody came by and was just messing with me.
“Colton comes running out and goes ‘Hey, Brandon, there’s a random kid in your house.’ So Brandon, our center who lives there, grabs the golf club out of my hand and just takes off on a full sprint back into his house. It was kind of like a scene out of Bad Boys II. Like when a guy comes over to take your daughter to prom and you invite all of your big buddies over to intimidate him. So that’s kind of what it was. Brandon was holding the golf club kind of interrogating this kid. And not shortly after, the cops had shown up.”
“No, I’ve had a F1-50 since I was like 18 years old, and you know how Ford’s have the lock code on the outside. I just use that, so I usually just leave my keys . But you can lock it and you get in with that code, so I’ve always done that. Colton, who I think should get blamed for all this, Brandon’s random friend who lives with him, went out to moves my truck so he could get his in. So he moved it and never locked it. So I locked it; he did not. I’m throwing him under the bus.”
