Neighbors’ suspicions lead to Key Largo drug arrest

Monroe County Sheriff’s Office deputies Tuesday arrested the twin brother of one of the two men awaiting trial for last October’s double murder of a Tavernier couple.

Kristian Demblans, 35, faces felony cocaine, heroin and drug paraphernalia possession charges, and and misdemeanor marijuana possession and operating a motorcycle without a license charges. He is being held on no bond in Monroe County jail.

Deputies with the Sheriff’s Office Narcotics unit had Demblans’ Lake View Drive home in Key Largo under surveillance in response to neighbors’ complaints about suspected drug activity at the house, according to the arrest report.

Deputies followed Demblans as he was driving his motorcycle, for which he does not have a license, on U.S. 1, onto Royal Palm Drive off mile marker 100, and onto Lake View Drive, where they pulled him over. In addition to not having a motorcycle endorsement, deputies told him his driver’s license was suspended because he owes back child support.

Deputy Julio Alvarez stated in his report that Demblans told cops he did not know he needed a motorcycle endorsement in Monroe County.

Deputies searched Demblans’ messenger bag he was wearing over his shoulder. According to the arrest report, they found eight suspected rocks of crack cocaine, a plastic bag containing less than a gram of marijuana and $1,932 in cash.

Inside the handlebar bag on his motorcycle, deputies found a black and silver aluminum smoking pipe with a small blue plastic bag containing less than a gram of heroin, two suspected crack rocks and a knife in a sheath.

Demblans invoked his right to silence and asked to see a lawyer. He has an arrest record going back to 2014, on charges including assault with a deadly weapon and felony domestic abuse by strangulation.

Demblans’ brother, Adrian Demblans, who was born a day before Kristian, has been in county jail on a charge of being an accessory after the fact of a capital felony since March.

Prosecutors say he drove Jeremy Macauley, 33, to and from the Cuba Road home where police say Macauley shot and killed Tara Rosado, 26, and Carlos Ortiz, 30 on Oct. 15, 2015. The motivation behind the murders, prosecutors say, was to silence Ortiz, who was reportedly trying to extort money from Macauley in exchange for not going to the police over “a large amount of cocaine” Macauley found offshore and allegedly sold.

Macauley and both Demblans brothers were in the charter fishing business. The drugs at the center of the Cuba Road murders were found while Macauley was working on the Sea Horse charter boat docked at Whale Harbor.

Both Macauley and Adrian Demblans pleaded not guilty. The trial is tentatively scheduled for November.

This story was originally published July 27, 2016 at 7:46 PM with the headline "Neighbors’ suspicions lead to Key Largo drug arrest."