A Florida man who stole a fire department’s brush truck four years ago is at it again, this time absconding from Colorado to Wyoming in a stolen semitruck, court documents claim.
Brice Andrew DiGiorgio, 35, is facing two felony theft charges in Carbon County, Wyoming, on allegations that he stole a semi in Colorado, fled with it through Wyoming until it wouldn’t drive anymore, then stole a Chevy pickup until it crashed on a two-track road near Hanna.
Wyoming Highway Patrol Trooper Evan Deneke received a be-on-the-lookout alert from Carbon County dispatch the afternoon of May 28, because the owner of a 2020 Mack day cab semitruck had reported it stolen out of Commerce City, Colorado, according to an evidentiary affidavit transferred Thursday to Carbon County District Court.
The truck’s owner was reportedly tracking it via GPS.
The thief was a white male wearing a blue, button-up shirt and “goofy” glasses, the truck’s owner told authorities.
Deneke reportedly found the truck in a barrow ditch off U.S. Highway 30 in Carbon County with no one inside it. It was slightly damaged as if it had hit a ditch, the affidavit says.
Deneke had the truck towed and kept tracking his suspect.
Watch Out For Those Two-Track Roads
At around that same time, someone stole a white 2023 Chevy pickup out of Medicine Bow, the document says.
The Chevy crashed, and OnStar (a remote emergency management system) called Carbon County dispatch once it detected the crash. Thrust into an unexpected 911 call, the driver allegedly told authorities he was going to get help from a nearby home.
But investigators didn’t find him. They believed he was hiding out in the sweeping sagebrush wilds of Carbon County.
The next day around noon, someone reported to law enforcement that a man walked into Dingy Dan’s bar in Hanna saying he’d been stranded in the sage for multiple days and needed an ambulance, the affidavit says.
Deneke went to the business and found the man sitting at the bar, wearing a JB’s gas station shirt and claiming to be a 32-year-old “Matthew Seymour.” The trooper suspected this identity was false.
Here the semitruck’s owner furnished some help, sending over dash camera video in which Deneke saw a man stealing the truck. He believed the thief in the video was the same man sitting at the bar, albeit in a different shirt.
Police found the dash camera suspect’s shirt stuffed into a trash can in the bathroom at JB’s, says the affidavit. Authorities believe DiGiorgio stole the JB’s shirt after discarding his first shirt.
Footage from JB’s showed the suspect with his shirt unbuttoned, revealing a knight’s helmet tattooed on the right side of his chest, reportedly.
The affidavit says Deneke noticed the same tattoo during his interaction with the man from the bar.
The man was taken to the hospital, where he “finally identified himself as Brice Andrew DiGiorgio,” says the document. Once medically cleared, he was taken to the Carbon County Detention Center.
Firefighter 21
When Larry Nisbet heard the story, the now-retired former chief of the Florida-based Bayshore Fire and Rescue chuckled.
DiGiorgio was arrested, and later sentenced on a no-contest plea, in 2021 for stealing the Bayshore fire department’s brush truck, a Ford F-550 with a flatbed, tank and pump.
Cowboy State Daily has confirmed with law enforcement agencies in Florida and Wyoming that the arrestees’ first, middle and last names are a match, as well as the birth date.
DiGiorgio had actually broken into a different fire station in Fort Myers, Florida, early that morning of Feb. 7, 2021, said Nisbet.
“The guys had found him in the day room and he was buck-ass naked,” Nisbet recalled. “He told the rookie firefighter, ‘What truck am I on?’”
Nisbet continued: “The rookie was like, ‘Hold that thought.’”
And the rookie reported the incident to the Fort Myers police, who detained DiGiorgio briefly then released him, Nisbet said.
Next, DiGiorgio came up to the Bayshore station about 11 miles away from the Fort Myers one. The firefighters were called out on a medical incident.
DiGiorgio hopped into a brush truck and took it for a joyride, the chief said.
“We got him to talk to us on the radio a couple times. He wasn’t making any sense. He was referring to himself as ‘Firefighter 21,’” Nisbet said.
The department put out an alert on Facebook.
DiGiorgio made it about 75 miles before Manatee County Sheriff’s officials arrested him.
Nisbet described it as a nonviolent incident and arrest, and said his understanding has been that DiGiorgio was “pretty scared” when authorities converged on him.
Never Forget
The incident became a department joke. When Nisbet retired just a few months later, one of his firefighters had a sticker made that read, “Never Forget Firefighter 21,” he said.
Unlike the reported incident in Wyoming, DiGiorgio was able to disable the GPS in the brush truck.
“We have no idea how he knew how to do that,” Nisbet said.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
