CALLAHAN, Fla. – A Jacksonville woman accused of trying to help a man suspected in the murder of a Nassau County deputy was arrested Tuesday, according to the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office.
Breiana Tole, 27, is accused of driving to the sports complex where Patrick McDowell was hiding out in an attempt to get him out of the area and escape arrest, according to an arrest report. She now faces felony accessory after the fact charges.
Timeline: Events following shooting of Deputy Joshua Moyers, leading to arrest of Patrick McDowell
According to Tole’s arrest report, investigators were able to key in on her after monitoring various social media websites and tracking possible associates of McDowell.
At around 3 p.m. on Monday, McDowell messaged Tole from a newly created Facebook account and told her to call him, her arrest report shows. McDowell, who had been on the run since Friday, told her he was in bad shape because he had been shot, according to the report.
“it’s not looking good. i need u more now than I’ve ever needed another living soul. I don’t beg, but I will be honest with you, without your help, I’m either gonna die out here from the wounds or they will kill me,” McDowell wrote in a Facebook message, according to the report.
Tole told him she would keep their conversation a secret.
“I won’t say anything to anyone. You have my word. I swear. I don’t trust the air around me, enough to gamble with your life. Let alone any person,” she wrote, according to the report. “Just tell me what to do, where to go. When to be wherever. What arrangement to make.”
McDowell then told Tole the latitude and longitude of his location and to meet him there at 6 a.m. on Tuesday. But when Tole drove down the road toward the sports complex to pick up McDowell, law enforcement was waiting, according to the report.
McDowell was found hiding out in a bathroom building at the Kirsten Higginbotham Sports Complex a short time later, five days after he allegedly shot Nassau County Deputy Joshua Moyers, who died from his injuries on Sunday.
At the time she was allegedly attempting to help McDowell, Tole knew that he was accused of killing Moyers, according to the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office.
Tole admitted to investigators she was going to the sports complex to help McDowell, according to the report.
A search of Tole’s phone revealed a message to an unnamed person at 6 p.m. on Friday night where she contemplated going out to look for McDowell after the shooting.
The Sheriff’s Office told News4Jax that Tole was not the woman in a van with McDowell the night he allegedly shot Moyers twice during a traffic stop.
Tole is being held in the Nassau County Jail on a $1 million bond.
During a press conference on Tuesday, Sheriff Bill Leeper indicated there may be more than one person that was helping McDowell.
“We are in the process of making other arrests to determine who helped [McDowell]. There were some people who were helping him. And we’ve got one at least in custody, there may be some more, we don’t know yet but we’ll continue to investigate,” Leeper said.