Lang
12/20/20
A transient with a colorful criminal history was arrested twice within ten hours for separate incidents on Saturday.
Online records show 52-year-old Gary Leon Duffel II was booked into the Johnson County Jail just before 7:45 Saturday morning for a 3rd Degree Criminal Mischief charge after an incident at Mercy Hospital. He was released just before 10:15am. No other details about the incident have been released.
Duffel was booked into the jail again at 5:22pm, this time on charges of Public Intoxication and Trespassing after a woman claimed Duffel tried to get into her Hudson Avenue residence.
Duffel has a lengthy and colorful criminal history. Last July he stole a $137 stone turtle statue from Phil’s Building Supplies on Hollywood Boulevard and dropped it in the nearby Suburban BP Amoco parking lot on Keokuk Street, causing it to break. Duffel pleaded guilty to a 5th Degree Theft charge and was fined $200.
In 2018 he was arrested for cutting down the flag outside the Iowa City VFW hall.
In March of 2010 Duffel was arrested for urinating on the front porch of then-Iowa City City Councilor Mike Wright.
Duffel was arrested at The Nickelodeon on the Coralville Strip in January of that year after he took his clothes off and began yelling about his recent release from the Henry County Correctional Facility.
Duffel was convicted on Criminal Mischief charges in 2007 after he toppled the Irving Weber statue at the corner of Iowa Avenue and Linn Street, breaking off the arm and causing an estimated $12,000 in damages.
In 2014 Duffel was arrested for stealing a keg off a beer truck parked at the Benton Street Delimart.
If convicted on the latest charges, Duffel faces a maximum of over two years in prison.