A habitual thief was recently sentenced after stealing a gun from a truck in Central Florida.
The career burglar and car thief who single-handedly worsened crime statistics in northern Brevard County was sentenced to life in prison. A jury convicted 43-year-old Wilford E. McCloud Jr. in July of armed car burglary and grand theft of a firearm stemming from a truck break-in in Port St. John in 2022.
Prosecutors Jennifer Mostert and Andrew Joy successfully argued at his sentencing that McCloud should be sentenced as a Habitual Offender and Prison Releasee Reoffender – statuses that qualified him for longer mandatory prison terms.
Circuit Judge Curt Jacobus sentenced McCloud to natural life in prison for the armed car burglary, due in part to McCloud’s 28 prior felony convictions for similar crimes. The judge also sentenced McCloud to 6.2 years for grand theft, to run concurrently with the other term.
McCloud was such a prolific offender, police have said, that local property-crime statistics dropped noticeably during times when McCloud was incarcerated over the past 25 years and rose again when he was released. His record included numerous convictions for burglary, petit theft, grand theft, and grand theft-motor vehicle as well as two prior convictions for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
“When you look at his history, this is all he’s ever done – menace every community he’s ever been in,” Mostert said.
McCloud’s undoing came in the early hours of February 22, 2022, when Brevard County sheriff’s deputies pulled him over for riding a purple Huffy women’s bicycle without a light on Grissom Parkway near Perimeter Road and subsequently arrested him for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
The black 9 mm Glock matched a handgun that was reported stolen from a Ford pickup truck parked in its owner’s driveway in Port St. John. Home security videos captured McCloud testing locks on a neighbor’s cars, burglarizing the truck, and then riding away on the same bicycle.
