Inset: Elmoncy Sercle (Miami-Dade Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation). Background: Serena Hotel in Aventura, Florida (Google Maps).
A rendezvous at a Florida hotel turned violent when a man ran over a woman after she refused to allow him to smell her feet, cops say.
The incident unfolded around 2 p.m. on Aug. 24 at the Serena Hotel in Aventura, about 20 miles north of Miami, a probable cause arrest affidavit said. The victim told cops she began speaking to a man named Elmoncy Sercle on the dating app Seeking and they agreed to meet at the hotel.
When she went up to the room, 28-year-old Sercle allegedly asked to smell her feet and buy her used shoes.
The victim told Sercle it would cost him $1,000 as she”s a foot model and that’s her going rate, according to the affidavit. She told him that the sneakers were in her car and she had to go get them, and she reportedly stated that she went to use the restroom and saw Sercle run out of the room. Thinking he stole something from her, the victim chased him to the parking garage, the affidavit stated.
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Once she got there, she saw him in a red Mercedes SUV. He passed her and allegedly stopped, did a three-point turn and then ran over the victim. She suffered road rash and bruising to her back, arms and chest which required “immediate medical attention,” cops wrote.
Sercle allegedly fled the scene but was later arrested on a charge of aggravated battery.
Local independent station WPLG interviewed the victim.
“When I got there, he just wanted to sniff my feet and I didn’t feel comfortable with that,” she told the TV station. “I mean, you could have my sneakers all you want. I mean, I don’t care. I’m not wearing them. And you know, they’re just stinky old sneakers. But people like weird things.”
She called the incident “extremely bizarre.”
“I’ve never experienced anything like this before,” she told the TV station. “I’ve met a lot of people who have foot fetishes, obviously, and nobody has ever done anything to this caliber.”
But she’s thankful she survived.
“By the grace of God, I’m still standing today,” she said.
Sercle has since bonded out of jail and is slated to appear in court on Sept. 29.
Cops say Sercle has several other open cases in Miami-Dade County for allegedly meeting women on dating apps, getting a hotel and then robbing them of their possessions.
