Law&Crime Sidebar - Woman Caught Having Sex on Florida Pier Jumped into Ocean to Avoid Arrest: Cops

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

On Memorial Day, Allyssia Razo, 20, and Zadok Westfield, 23, were allegedly having sex on a Florida pier that was gated off but in full view of beachgoers. When an officer approached them, Razo allegedly jumped into the water and swam to shore, where she was apprehended by beach patrol officers. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber goes over details of the case with criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor Kathleen Bogenschutz. PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If you’ve used Incognito mode in Google’s Chrome browser, find out if you have a claim in a few clicks by visiting https://www.incognitoclaims.com/sidebar/?v=sb10HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael DeiningerScript Writing & Producing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Yeah, this is just very out of my comfort zone, very nerve-wracking, very different from anything I've done before. A Florida woman had an interesting choice for an escape route after police allegedly caught her having sex with a man on a busy public pier. We're getting all the gritty details and we're breaking it down with criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor Kathleen Bogan Shoots. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber.

Hey there, everybody. This is a law and crime legal alert. Google Incognito tracked users browsing data without their knowledge. Yep, while Mass Tort Alliance, one of our legal sponsors, is actually helping users file for compensation due to Google users' privacy issues surrounding Google Incognito. So if you've used Google Incognito any time since 2016, you can start your claim in less than 10 questions. Just go to Incognito Claims.com slash sidebar. A wild story for you right now out of Naples, Florida. So investigators say they were called out to this historic public pier on Memorial Day. And you could probably imagine that there's a lot of people at the beach on Memorial Day, right?

Well, a mom called 911 to say that there were two people out there on the pier behind a lock gate around 4.30 p.m., so right in broad daylight, having sex. Yes. According to the arrest report, the officer spotted 20-year-old Alyssa Razo and 23-year-old Zadak Westfield through a locked gate with visible signs that said no trespassing. was reportedly still wearing her swimsuit while Westfield, according to law enforcement, was completely naked. The report says, quote, the female adjusted her swimsuit to cover herself and stepped to the edge

of the pier. I instructed her not to jump from the pier, but she did in an attempt to evade me and began to swim northeast towards the beach. Now, the officer didn't jump in after her and try to swim and catch her. Instead, what did they do? They waited for her to leave the water, and Beach Patrol intercepted her. Meanwhile, Mr. Westfield was still on the dock with the officer, and the arrest report reads, I escorted him off the pier, and he explained that he and Razzo swam to the end of the pier and climbed to the top to jump off,

but they eventually engaged in sexual intercourse. Both subjects were detained. Now, here's another important aspect of it. The report also talks about a witness who originally called police. She said, this is a mother, that her children and her friend's children, who were ages 7 to 15, were at the beach near the Naples pier. When they looked to the pier, they observed the subjects engaging in sexual intercourse. The witness also stated that her minor children were asking questions about what these two people were doing. Razzo and Westfield were both charged with trespassing and breach of peace. Razzo was also hit with an additional charge of resisting without violence.

You know, we did some digging and found that Ms. Razzo recently started posting on Instagram seemingly as part of a wellness brand. So what I was doing, What my problem was when I was trying to figure out my passions was I was making the idea of finding my passions such a big problem in my head. Well, clearly we have a lot to talk about. So let me bring in criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor, Kathleen Bogan Shoots. Kathleen, so good to have you here. This is a different one. Have you ever seen anything like this before?

Have you ever prosecuted a case like this before? Not involving a peer, but like most things in Florida, yes, it has happened before. And in fact, you just, you just trashed on Florida, not me. Let me make it clear. I can never run for office here. I love this state, but we're America's Australia. It's a criminal population and a lot of things can kill you. So I have prosecuted cases like this before. The key in charging the felony in this case, case would be whether the kids perceived the sex act and the fact that the parents were alerted to the parent or to the children asking questions about it kind of indicates that you might be able to go for a lewd lascivious exhibition charge, which is based on

the perpetrators ages, would be a second degree felony. Right now they're only charged with misdemeanors. But I do recall, can I ask you about that real quick? Sure. Do they need the intent to do that in front of the children, or is it more negligence? Like, they might not have known the kids were there. Look, if they knew the kids were there and were doing that in front of them, I could say, yeah, maybe you have a charge of it. But does it, if they were just acting negligently, they weren't thinking about what they were doing, could you still prosecute them on that? So it's really going to turn on the facts that you have here.

I mean, if they were trying to, if there was any, like, a way of that they were trying to hide themselves being out in public. look like that. I've actually researched this that and I sometimes I think to myself, man, I was going places in life and now I just argue with people about penises. But I've actually researched this where you can like be touching yourself in a mall and if a child sees you, do you have to know that the child was there? Or can you have maybe intended just for the adults to see when the child runs up? If the child perceives it, you're, you kind of like, you break it, bought it situation. But if there's an argument that like, you know, they're trying to conceal themselves in some way, there's, it's plus or minus there. And in this case, the pier had been

damaged by Hurricane Ian. So the pier was closed. Now, it's an open pier, though. And it appears that the kids were not having trouble figuring out what was going on, that something weird was going on, on the pier. So I, I venture to guess. that the state attorney's office in this particular circuit could possibly charge with the felony. There's also the fact that the peer was closed because of the damage. And I would get the feeling there were trespassing signs up. And there's also trespassing in a, there's trespassing on a construction site. If they're continuing to, if they're going onto a construction site, that's a third degree felony in the state of Florida. So they, but what they're charged with right now

are just misdemeanors? Correct. And how serious is that? The city attorney's office, to review it though. So you're saying first let's let's break that down for second. You're saying they're currently charged with misdemeanors. Is there a possibility it could be upgraded to felonies? Let's start there. Yes. The state attorney's office could review it and decide. I'm not familiar with this particular peer. I don't know what they were behind. It sounds like they weren't in the water. It sounds like they were on the pier and visible. But you can throw in those additional facts to try to muddy the waters. And the misdemeanors that I mentioned, do you, you think that this is something that they would fight at trial? Do you think they would work

out a deal? What would it look like? Would they get any time behind jail for this? Because they're not the first people to have sexual intercourse in a public place and an area where they're not supposed to be. Yeah. And my favorite part was I thought we were just going to jump off the pier, but we ended up having sex. It just glosses over so much. And one would assume that there were some substances involved as well, potentially, in making decisions to do this all out in the open. I could see them potentially being charged with felonies and pleading it down to a misdemeanor, or the state uses the fact that felonies could be charged, or at least there's a good faith basis to try to do that in order to plead them out to misdemeanors. There is a law in

Florida called Marcy's law that indicates that the victims do have some input. in these, uh, uh, kinds of cases. And I get the feeling that the parents probably, uh, want them under the jail because they're now spending their ride back from the beach in a minivan explaining something they really wish they had time to plan for. But, but, but what about their ages? I mean, they're really young. Does that a factor into the sentencing or a plea deal of some kind? So Florida has, uh, laws about, um, youthful offenders. They're not juveniles, right? They're 20 and 23, I believe. Yep. Um, There's some indications that sentencing should be based on age and relative maturity levels.

And I think that just based on their actions, their relative maturity is incredibly low, whether or not substances are involved. But I mean, it's really one of the dumbest. Well, I won't say one of the dumbest. It's, it is dumb. I can't say one of the dumbest things I've seen based on where I practice law. I must tell you, again, you're trash in Florida. What do I? I love to blame for this. It's so entertaining.

The jumping in the water aspect to escape from law enforcement, that's been the allegation. I was just talking to Chris Hanson about this on a prior sidebar. It's so ridiculous because, A, those people are always going to get caught. They run away from police. They're always going to get caught. And B, it could be used this consciousness of guilt. It can say, yes, I did what you're accusing me of. That's why I ran away.

It always is used to show they're guilty. But are you ever surprised when you see people try to escape from law enforcement like that? Again, that's what the allegation is here. You know, there's like the fight or flight instinct. And even if you're not under the influence of something, there's this knee-jerk reaction. Some people freeze. Some people run. And even if you're surrounded by, you can pull up any litany of videos that are available

on the internet of people running away from cop cars where they're literally surrounded. And they're like, no, I'm going to do it. I'm going to jump over this fence. And they know there's a canine too. And you're just not making rational decisions. I think it's an adrenaline response. And a lot of people commit crimes on tape. Like they're going to post it on social media.

I'm not talking about necessarily graphic crime. I'm talking about even things like trespassing. Like you're giving prosecutors the evidence that they need. Again, not saying that they videotaped anything here. I will say I thought it was fascinating. And if I read that correctly, that she jumps into the water. They didn't bring out like a boat to come get her. they're like she's going to tie her out she's going to have to come back to shore and we'll get her yeah and also keep in mind the west coast of florida so the east coast has really good fishing because it drops off real quick west coast of florida really has a very gradual slide into the gulf of mexico so they're not worried about like you know her going into a major shipping lane or anything like that they're just like yeah yeah because i i enjoyed it yeah it's only so far uh she could swim um talk to me about other than criminal

charges, could either of them face any civil liability, maybe even from that mom, who, again, her children or the children she was with, witnessed this. Any kind of civil liability for these two? Not my area of law. So I really can't speak to it, but I can tell you that I once prosecuted a misdemeanor exposure of sex organs case where only adults saw it. So if no children, we couldn't find a single child that saw a single thing in a movie theater. And I prosecuted like it was a murder one. And the defense attorney defended it like it was a murder one. And all these little cute kids that were straight out of law school, we're like, what are you doing here in our courtroom? And the answer is that in Florida, Jimmy Rice is involved. And the person that I was

prosecuting had, I think, three or four other prior sex offenses for doing something similar where children had seen them or he had gone hands on with children. And in this particular scenario in Fort Lauderdale, it was in a movie theater and all the kids were watching the Lion King or something like that. And none of the kids, you know, I don't know if you have kids, but like they're watching the TV, basically drooling and, you know, not paying attention to anything else. And the mom saw it and reported it. And yeah, that one, I mean, we were filing motions that were hundreds of pages long because he knew. And I knew that if I won, he was probably going to get committed. Right, right.

Well, here's my question to you, and I'll end it on this. So the both of them were arrested. They were released from the Collier County Jail-on-Bomb the same day. What do you think would be an appropriate punishment for them? Should they plead guilty or should they be found guilty? In your perspective, is it jail? Is it community service? Is it something else to give back to the community?

What would you recommend for these two based on these allegations? Well, I'd start with, so we don't have all the facts because it's condensed into a report. I get the feeling that the police officers that made the arrest have a pretty good idea of what was involved here, whether it's substance abuse, whether there's some maybe mental health issues here where you've got, I mean, there are people that really enjoy doing that kind of thing in public. So, I mean, I would start with the substance abuse evaluation and a mental health evaluation and go from there as to what might be an appropriate sentence. And also, their history would inform whether there should maybe be something more punitive on top of that. Because, like I said, I had a guy that clearly there was a pattern here and he was going to children's movie theaters over and over and over again. And just the one time that we couldn't prove the felony, and suddenly somebody from sex crime shows up in a misdemeanor courtroom and is like, all right, tosses down the statute book and says alphabetically we are charged with. Yep.

Because one of the cops looked up his history and called me. Well, look, we're not dealing quite with that situation. Right. Exactly. That's an extreme scenario. But look, I mean, it's just so brazen. 4.30 in the afternoon to do this. What a story.

Kathleen Bogan-Schutz. Thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate you taking the time. And no more insulting Florida. Okay? No more insulting. I love Florida. I know.

I know. I know. But again, I will tell you from the other side. This kind of story doesn't really help the idea that no craziness happens there. And look, for anybody who follows us a long crime or sidebar, yes, we do cover a lot of stories from Florida. Good, bad, all things happening. But Kathleen Bogan-shoots, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Thanks for having me. All right, everybody. That is all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us. As always, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. Apple Podcasts or Spotify.