{"id":134246,"date":"2024-06-19T21:13:05","date_gmt":"2024-06-20T01:13:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=134246"},"modified":"2024-06-19T21:13:05","modified_gmt":"2024-06-20T01:13:05","slug":"ex-police-officer-charged-with-sexual-battery-stalking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=134246","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Police Officer Charged With Sexual Battery, Stalking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-134242\" src=\"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/MARKANTHONY-FERNANDEZ.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"306\" srcset=\"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/MARKANTHONY-FERNANDEZ.jpg 362w, https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/MARKANTHONY-FERNANDEZ-126x160.jpg 126w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: center;\"><strong>MARKANTHONY FERNANDEZ<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: center;\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: center;\">The former Bartow police officer who remains in the Polk County Jail following his arrest on May 28, 2024, is facing additional charges. He was arrested for inappropriate and criminal behavior with four teenage females, and now has additional criminal charges from the Polk County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Detectives from the PCSO became aware of a comment on a Facebook post about the arrest of\u00a024-year-old<strong> Markanthony Fernandez<\/strong>, which indicated that the commenter may also have been a victim of <strong>Fernandez.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The commenter was contacted by a PCSO detective and she agreed to speak about an encounter she had with <strong>Fernandez <\/strong>back in July of 2023.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The adult victim stated that <strong>Fernandez<\/strong> had reached out to her on Facebook and immediately became persistent about going out on a date with her, and she eventually agreed. She said that during the date, he slapped her, hit her with a fist, and choked her to the point she couldn\u2019t breathe. The victim said she began to scream and begged <strong>Fernandez<\/strong> to stop as he sexually battered her.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The victim provided detectives with text messages from <strong>Fernandez<\/strong> that showed he attempted numerous times to solicit her for sex, but she continually refused.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A detective attempted to speak to <strong>Fernandez <\/strong>in the Polk County Jail about the new accusations against him, but he declined to make a statement.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Markanthony Fernandez <\/strong>was additionally charged with sexual battery with physical force and aggravated stalking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MARKANTHONY FERNANDEZ \u00a0\u00a0 The former Bartow police officer who remains in the Polk County Jail following his arrest on May 28, 2024, is facing additional charges. He was arrested for inappropriate and criminal behavior with four teenage females, and now has additional criminal charges from the Polk County Sheriff\u2019s Office. Detectives from the PCSO became [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88889,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/88889"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=134246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134248,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134246\/revisions\/134248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=134246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=134246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=134246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}