An investigation into migrants landing in the Florida Keys wound up landing a school bus-owning registered sex offender back into incarceration.
After his arrest last Friday by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Fort Lauderdale resident Sonny Steel, 69, sits in Broward County Main Jail on 12 counts of failure to properly register as a sexual predator and two counts of failing to report a change in vehicles owned. Online court records list a public defender has been appointed for him.
Back in 1997, Steel was charged with two counts each of sexual battery on a helpless victim, indecent assault on a child under 16 years old and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He eventually pleaded no contest to the sexual battery on a helpless victim charges, and was sentenced to eight years in prison and 10 years probation. With credit for three years time served at sentencing, Steel spent Oct. 17, 2000, to Jan. 25, 2005, in prison, then did his probation.
During his probation, in 2011, Steel didn’t notify authorities that he’d moved. He pleaded no contest to failure to comply with the law as a sex offender and got a six-month probation sentence that was terminated after three months.
As FDLE online sexual offender records note, Steel was living in the 2600 block of Key Largo Lane in Fort Lauderdale before Friday.
Boats, a bus and automobiles
FDLE said in January that a boat registered to Steel “was seized as part of a human smuggling investigation stemming from the mass migration deployment in the Florida Keys.”
The boat was registered. But Steel “knowingly” put the wrong license plate down for his 2016 Dodge Ram pickup truck that he owned, FDLE Inspector Paul Williams wrote in the probable cause section of the arrest warrant. Inspector Williams said Steel put down “DCSS12” as the pickup truck’s license plate for each of his 12 mandatory registrations from Feb. 25, 2020, through Nov. 2, 2022.
The license plate Williams said he saw on Jan. 11: G4BLD.
Also, Williams said, Steel didn’t report owning a travel trailer and a 1997 yellow International Harvester school bus. Williams said Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles records said Steel bought the school bus with his live-in girlfriend on May 17, 2022, from the Faith Baptist Church in Margate. The arrest warrant says Steel canceled the registration in July, but held on to the bus until selling it on Jan. 17 for $1,000.