Everything You Need to Know About Vanilla Ice’s Arrest

Image via Wiki Commons

February 18, 2015 is a day that will go down in history, for it is the day that Robert Van Winkle, known to the world as Vanilla Ice, was arrested in Lantana, Florida.

According to a police report provided to Noisey by the Lantana Police Department (which lists Van Winkle’s occupation as “Construction,” and also as “self-employed”), the theft actually dates back to December 26, 2014. Lantana police received a suspicious report of squatters at a residence on North Atlantic Drive. When they investigated, Ice showed up and straight up took his lying to the extreme by telling the police by saying he had purchased the house. The next day, it was discovered by the police that the house actually had been foreclosed on and was in the power of Jim Lovley, a real estate broker. Lovley ended up reporting the missing items from the house, which included:

Iron table with a glass top – $450
Three Bar stools – $300
Twelve patio chairs – $1000
Two artwork items – $300
Glass Vase – $100
Two Bicycles – $400
Pool Heater – $3000
Two Mattresses – $200
Beige Cloth sofa – $1000
Large Mirror – $500

On February 8, Lovley contacted the police saying that the residence had been burglarized a second time. This time, he was deprived of a coffee table and various “tchotchkes.” They received a tip to go over to Vanilla Ice’s place, owned by his aptly named company, “Van Rap LTD,” and found a majority of the items reported missing. But the tchotchkes were, unfortunately, never found.

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Detectives arrested and interviewed Ice. Here, his story gets a bit more bizarre. He states he was intending to purchase the property, but had not yet done so. He thought the items he was removing were trash that he found on the curb. However, this does not address the fact that he removed an entire pool heater from the property. Additionally, he had been assisted by his foreman and crew from “The Vanilla Ice Project,” his DIY Network home renovation show. He had also apparently fibbed to his crew and told them that he had purchased the house for renovation. Here, you can imagine a Wes Anderson-esque tableaux of tattooed up white boys led by Ice stealing the junk in the dead of night. The foreman insisted he was not told the truth by Van Winkle, and had no knowledge of any wrongdoing. He has not been charged.

Jim Lovley told NBC6 that he didn’t understand why Ice would risk jail time to steal a bunch of useless shit. He told the reporter he wasn’t angry. When Noisey reached out to Lovley, he said he was fed up with us reporters, and we had been driving him crazy. “Why don’t you try calling Mr. Ice?” he said, somewhat icily. We could not reach Mr. Van Winkle for comment.

Vanilla Ice stayed in Palm Beach County Jail for a few hours. He posted a $6,000 dollar bond and told a potpourri of reporters that, “It’s just blown out of proportion…I wish you guys would focus on the good things I’ve done.” Presumably, Ice is talking about the time he was arrested for threatening a homeless man with a gun. Or the time he was arrested for assaulting his wife in Davie, Florida while driving on I-95. Or perhaps letting his pet wallaroo and goat, Bucky and Pancho respectively, escape and wander the streets of Port St. Lucie, Florida. Which actually seems like an adorably good thing. But I think Ice might be referring to the second time he assaulted his wife? In any case, Van Winkle will be charged with burglary and grand theft.

The DIY Network also released a statement: “DIY Network has been made aware of this situation and is currently looking into the matter.”

Jonathan Peltz writes for VICE, VICE, baby. He’s on Twitter.