LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – More than a dozen Orange County sheriff’s deputies swarmed a shuttered Walt Disney World topic park in April hoping to locate a trespasser accused of tenting on an island at the resort, movie attained by Information 6 reveals.
Richard McGuire, 42, was arrested in April for allegedly tenting at Disney’s previous Discovery Island zoological park even though the complete vacation resort was shut due to the coronavirus pandemic.
[RELATED: Report: Man caught camping on Disney’s Discovery Island says it was ‘tropical paradise’]
As deputies searched by floor, air and drinking water trying to find McGuire, the suspected trespasser recorded films of himself hiding on the island.
“Disney earth ain’t taking part in. Disney Planet ain’t (expletive) enjoying,” McGuire claimed in a video clip, not too long ago posted on his YouTube channel, showing him masking himself with leaves as the sheriff’s helicopter can be listened to circling overhead.
McGuire has pleaded not guilty to trespassing at Disney, a misdemeanor that carries a utmost a single-calendar year jail sentence.
Recently launched online video captured by deputies’ physique-worn cameras displays how the manhunt unfolded on Discovery Island, an 11-acre island in the center of Disney’s Bay Lake that at the time housed animal displays, going for walks trails and a refreshment stand.
The previous park, which can only be achieved by boat, shut to the community in 1999, a person calendar year following Disney’s Animal Kingdom concept park opened.
A wildlife path digital camera, like the type employed by hunters and biologists, snapped a photograph of a man trespassing on Discovery Island just before 7:00 a.m. on April 30, Disney protection officers advised deputies.
Video clips posted on McGuire’s YouTube channel reveal he traveled to the island close to 11 p.m. the earlier night working with a modest boat that he transported to Disney residence on the roof of his van.
About one particular hour just before the trespasser was photographed by Disney’s digital camera, McGuire can be observed on a YouTube video drying his boots in front of a campfire that appears to have been ignited within a developing on the island.
“You guys, if you all ever do this, be respectful to the following folks who are explorers,” McGuire said on the YouTube video clip. “If you have a fireplace, make guaranteed you place it out the next working day. I’ve been executing this due to the fact 2004 and I’ve under no circumstances caught everything on fireplace.”
All around 8 a.m., two deputies took a boat throughout Bay Lake and commenced searching the island.
The deputies’ human body-worn cameras clearly show them holding guns as they appeared for the trespasser inside the former park’s decaying properties and alongside vine-entangled trails.
“He’s received to be somewhere listed here,” 1 deputy reported as she recognized more law enforcement officers would be needed to address the island.
A few several hours afterwards, 3 teams of deputies arrived at Discovery Island by boat and began canvassing the home as the sheriff’s helicopter flew overhead.
In just one of the video clips posted on McGuire’s YouTube channels, deputies’ voices can be read in the track record as he appears to cover from them.
“They’re talking to me,” McGuire said on the video. “The island is surrounded.”
For far more than an hour, deputies trekked by way of the previous zoo’s rusty animal cages, crumbling restrooms and collapsed boardwalks, at periods utilizing machetes to chop through thick brush.
“This is the most effective video game of conceal-and-seek out at any time,” just one deputy joked.
“Dude, this is sketchy,” his spouse responded.
Not able to find the trespasser, deputies finished the ground search, but Disney staff members continued to observe in excess of the island from shore.
“We in all probability walked right earlier him,” said a single deputy prior to leaving the island.
All-around 8:00 p.m, deputies had been termed back to Walt Disney Earth when a guy who later on discovered himself as McGuire was seen crossing Bay Lake in a motorized boat.
“I’m just wore out. Flat wore out,” McGuire said shortly just after approaching a deputy on the shore and pulling the boat out of the h2o.
“Did you go camping?,” requested the deputy.
“Yeah,” McGuire responded. “That’s a tropical paradise. I was heading to stay out there for about a week.”
As McGuire was handcuffed and positioned in a patrol automobile, deputies located his camouflage-coloured van with a decal that read through “Wildlife Industry Biologist”.
Around the van, which deputies stated had been illegally parked in an alley powering houses in Orange County’s Horizons West community, deputies encountered a female considered to be McGuire’s girlfriend.
Despite the fact that she originally denied knowing nearly anything about McGuire, the unknown female afterwards acknowledged McGuire was there to shoot movies for their YouTube channel, deputies’ human body-worn cameras demonstrate.
“I informed (McGuire), ’Look, if you get in trouble, depend me out. I’m not portion of it,’” the woman discussed to deputies. “I really like him, but not that substantially.”
Even while McGuire’s legal situation is however currently being prosecuted, new videos showing him on Discovery Island have been posted on his YouTube site as a short while ago as final week.
“Luckily, I have currently taken my daughter Disney Earth right before I obtained a existence ban,” McGuire advised his 2,300 YouTube channel subscribers in his most the latest video. “Who wouldn’t want to go and have it all to by themselves?”
Copyright 2020 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All legal rights reserved.
Friendly alcohol advocate. Future teen idol. Beer aficionado. Amateur music fanatic. Food guru.