At a law office in downtown Orlando, Worrell pointed to the reintroduction of the Orange-Osceola State Attorney’s Office’s adult civil citation program, which was initially discontinued by appointed state attorney Andrew Bain before he announced Monday it will resume this month. The program offers alternatives to arrest for non-violent offenders, such as counseling or community service.

She further cited her office’s conviction rates, with what she said was a 70% felony conviction rate and 99% for homicide cases in the second quarter. On Monday, Bain reported strikingly similar numbers: convictions in 71% of felony trials and all of five homicide cases for his first 100 days.

“Not surprisingly, most of what he reported were the exact same things I was doing under my administration,” Worrell told reporters. A spokesperson for Bain did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Worrell’s press conference comes less than a month before her legal team is scheduled to present oral arguments before the Florida Supreme Court in an attempt to be reinstated as state attorney. Lawyers for Gov. Ron DeSantis said the Florida Senate is the proper venue for reinstatement, calling her suspension a “political question.”

The hearing is set for Dec. 6.

DeSantis appointed Bain, a former Orange County judge, after suspending Worrell on Aug. 9 for what he said was a dereliction of duty for not prosecuting certain crimes more aggressively. Cited in his suspension order were alleged policies to avoid pushing for mandatory minimum sentences along with prosecutors dropping cases involving illegal guns and drug trafficking.

Worrell on Monday said the governor to date has not offered “not one scintilla of evidence” supporting those claims, adding that cases involving minimum mandatory sentences were handled “with care and caution.” She also further questioned data reported by the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office regarding her office’s handling of their drug trafficking cases. Sheriff Marcos Lopez said she refused to prosecute many cases, but Worrell insists cases had to be dropped because of mishandled investigations.

DeSantis, who critics say went after Worrell for exercising prosecutorial discretion, counts law enforcement leaders among his supporters in the lawsuit against him. Earlier this month, the Florida Sheriffs Association filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to uphold Worrell’s suspension, which came after a months-long feud between her and local leaders.

“Law enforcement’s biggest contention with me was that I didn’t rubber stamp their decisions and that I did hold them accountable when they broke the law,” Worrell said. “That is why they wanted me out of office and that is why you see them laud and praise the governor’s state attorney [Bain], because they are all carrying out the governor’s agenda.”

On Monday, Bain said he plans on running for election against Worrell to keep his position as state attorney. Records show Worrell and Republican Seth Hyman have filed as candidates.

Authorities said Donna Adelson, 73, was arrested Monday night as she and her husband were about to use one-way tickets to board a flight to Dubai and Vietnam, countries that do not have an extradition treaty with the United States. She is charged with arranging the 2014 murder of Florida State University law professor Daniel Markel, who was shot in the head inside his Tallahassee garage.

Leon County State Attorney Jack Campbell said in a Tuesday phone interview that while he believes his prosecutors already had enough evidence to convict Adelson before Monday, plans for her arrest had to be accelerated when investigators learned of her plans to leave the country.

“It was going to be complicated and really difficult trying to bring them back, depending on where they ended up in the world,” Campbell said. “The arrest was not just based on the flight, but that played a part in the timing.”

Adelson was being held Tuesday at the Miami-Dade County Jail without bail pending her transfer to Tallahassee. Jail records do not show if she has an attorney./ She has long denied involvement in the killing.

Her son, Dr. Charlie Adelson, was convicted last week of arranging Markel’s shooting through a girlfriend, Katie Magbanua. She employed her ex-husband and his friend, both members of the notorious Latin Kings gang, to murder Markel, 41.

Magbanua and her ex-husband, Sigfredo Garcia, are serving life sentences after being convicted earlier of first-degree murder. His friend, Luis Rivera, is serving a 19-year sentence after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and testifying against the others.

Charlie Adelson, 47, faces a mandatory life term when sentenced next month.

Markel had been involved in a bitter custody battle with his ex-wife, lawyer Wendi Adelson, and had gotten a court order barring her move from Tallahassee back to South Florida with their two young sons.

Authorities say the Adelsons offered Markel $1 million to let his ex-wife and sons move, but when he refused Charlie Adelson and other members of the family began plotting his death.

During his trial, it was shown that Charlie Adelson paid Magbanua $138,000, which she split with the killers, and the family then gave her a no-show job at their dental practice and other payments totaling more than $56,000. Charlie Adelson also gave her a used Lexus.

Wendi Adelson and her father, dentist Harvey Adelson, have not been charged, but Campbell said the investigation remains open. They have denied involvement.

Markel was shot while parking in his garage after he dropped his sons off at daycare and visited the gym.

The Adelsons immediately became suspects in Markel’s slaying after Wendi Adelson told detectives that the killing could have been arranged on her behalf, saying her parents were “very angry at Markel.” She told them that her brother had joked about hiring a hit man to kill Markel as a divorce gift, but he bought her a TV instead.

Still, the investigation involving local and state agencies and the FBI proceeded slowly.

Investigators were able to track phone records showing numerous calls between Charlie Adelson and Magbanua, her and the killers and Charlie Adelson, his mother and his sister in the hours before and shortly after the killing as well as large monetary transactions between the family and Magbanua. Garcia and Rivera were then linked to a rented Toyota Prius the killers used.

In 2016, an FBI agent, impersonating an extortionist, approached Donna Adelson outside her home and demanded $5,000 to not turn information about the slaying over to investigators. The ruse had been concocted in hopes that it would trigger a reaction from the Adelsons.

She contacted her son, telling him they needed to discuss “some paperwork” and that “you probably have a general idea what I’m talking about.” They led to several calls and meetings between her and her son.

Charlie Adelson was arrested last year after technicians enhanced a recording made of him and Magbanua inside a Mexican restaurant in 2016 while they were under surveillance discussing the extortion attempt.

In the conversation, Adelson told Magbanua that she would need to meet with the extortionist and agree to a one-time payment.

He also told her he wasn’t worried about being arrested, but if he thought police had any evidence proving the family orchestrated the slaying, “we would have already gone to the airport.”

The town hall, moderated by Tampa Police Chief Lee Bercaw, comes less than two weeks after dozens of residents and business owners spoke at a Tampa City Council meeting to push back against a proposal to close Ybor bars at 1 a.m. for the next six months.

Tuesday night, some community members decried Ybor’s clustered bar scene, but other longtime residents said the neighborhood was still a safe place despite what happened last month.

Many of the two dozen who offered input to Bercaw, police officials and City Council members in attendance asked for more youth outreach efforts and fewer guns on the streets.

Dionne Neal, 53, moved to Tampa in 2019 so that her son Dyante could live with her and enroll in Hillsborough Community College to finish his associate’s degree.

In 2019, the 25-year-old student was punched and killed outside a bar on East Seventh Avenue in Ybor. Neal said she hoped to see a curfew for minors that would keep them off the streets late at night.

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“I don’t want to see another Tay Tay,” she said.

Bercaw said dispatch calls and even the number of guns confiscated in Ybor doubles in the early morning hours compared to those before midnight. He said 34 guns were seized Monday night — 10 of them before midnight and 24 afterward.

“After midnight is the witching hour,” Bercaw said.

On Oct. 29, an argument broke out in the early morning between two groups and shots rang out near the 1600 block of East Seventh Avenue, police say. Two were killed and 16 injured — 15 by gunfire.

While police have not released the victims’ names, citing Marsy’s Law, family members have identified both 14-year-old Elijah Wilson and 20-year-old Harrison Boonstoppel as the two people killed in the incident.

Police arrested Tyrell Phillips, 22, hours after the shooting. Phillips has since pleaded not guilty after prosecutors charged him with one count of second-degree murder with a firearm. Investigators are still looking for at least two additional shooters.

Eric Schiller, the owner of Gaspar’s Grotto, asked Bercaw to stop closing the streets when Ybor businesses close for the night.

“I feel like a broken record because I’ve said this same damn speech about every five years to as many people as I possibly can,” he said.

Bercaw defended the decision to close the streets along Ybor’s bars when those businesses close. He said it allows the large wave of bargoers to exit safely without risk of being hit by a vehicle.

“That’s the million-dollar question is whether to leave the streets open or whether or not to,” Bercaw said. “There’s a sweet spot where we feel like we have to close them when the public is coming out of the nightclubs. The sidewalks can’t handle the volume.”

‘Can you get my son back to me?’ Tampa parents grieve after Ybor shooting

Niki Carraway, 44, of Brandon, said she regularly attends the Police Department’s Town Hall Tuesday events and the turnout Tuesday night was the largest she’d ever seen.

“What’s happening in our community is not a police problem and it’s not a club scene problem,” she said. “This is a community problem. And as a community, we have got to start to come together.”

She urged adults to check in with troubled young people.

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“Our youth is our future,” she said. “And if we don’t do something about it, we’re going to lose them.”

Calvin Johnson, the department’s deputy chief of community outreach, said this work starts at home.

“A lot of these shootings is within — like the chief said — about 10 or 15 seconds because somebody has not told their child to take a deep breath when you get upset. They haven’t had that conversation,” he said.

“I think that we’re doing everything that we can possibly do to help reduce gun violence. But what I don’t want you to leave here tonight with was thinking that your involvement doesn’t mean anything. We need you as ambassadors out there.”

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin is making another attempt to overturn his federal civil rights conviction in the 2020 murder of George Floyd, saying new evidence shows that he didn’t cause Floyd’s death.

In a motion filed in federal court Monday, Chauvin said he never would have pleaded guilty to the charge in 2021 if he had known about the theories of a Kansas forensic pathologist with whom he began corresponding in February. Chauvin is asking the judge who presided over his trial to throw out his conviction and order a new trial, or at least an evidentiary hearing.

Floyd, who was Black, died on May 25, 2020 after Chauvin, who is white, kneeled on his neck for 9 1/2 minutes on the street outside a convenience store where Floyd tried to pass a counterfeit $20 bill. A bystander video captured Floyd’s fading cries of “I can’t breathe.” Floyd’s death touched off protests worldwide, some of which turned violent, and forced a national reckoning with police brutality and racism.

Chauvin, who is serving a 21-year sentence at a federal prison in Arizona, filed the request without a lawyer. He says Dr. William Schaetzel, of Topeka, Kansas, told him that he believes Floyd died not from asphyxia from Chauvin’s actions, but from complications of a rare tumor called a paraganglioma that can cause a fatal surge of adrenaline. The pathologist did not examine Floyd’s body but reviewed autopsy reports.

“I can’t go to my grave with what I know,” Schaetzel told The Associated Press by phone on Monday, explaining why he reached out to Chauvin. He went on to say, “I just want the truth.”

Chauvin further alleges that Schaetzel reached out to his trial attorney, Eric Nelson, in 2021, as well as the judge and prosecution in his state-court murder trial, but that Nelson never told him about the pathologist or his ideas. He also alleges that Nelson failed to challenge the constitutionality of the federal charge.

But Chauvin claims in his motion that no jury would have convicted him if it had heard the pathologist’s evidence

Nelson declined to comment Monday.

When Chauvin pleaded guilty to the federal charge in December 2021, he waived his rights to appeal except on the basis of a claim of ineffective counsel.

A federal appeals court has rejected Chauvin’s requests for a rehearing twice. He’s still waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether it will hear his appeal of his state court murder conviction.

Three other former officers who were at the scene received lesser state and federal sentences for their roles in Floyd’s death.

ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia district attorney who charged former President Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election said Tuesday that she expects his trial will be underway through Election Day next year and could possibly stretch past the inauguration in 2025.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis made the comments at an event sponsored by The Washington Post. Her remarks came shortly after Willis asked a judge for an emergency protective order to prevent evidence in the case from being leaked, just a day after news outlets reported on prosecutors’ video interviews with four co-defendants who have pleaded guilty in the case.

Trump was indicted along with 18 others in Fulton County in August on charges they participated in a wide-ranging conspiracy to keep the Republican incumbent in power after he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump and the remaining defendants — including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows — have all pleaded not guilty.

“I believe in that case there will be a trial. I believe the trial will take many months. And I don’t expect that we will conclude until the winter or the very early part of 2025,” Willis told the newspaper at the The Washington Post’s Global Women’s Summit.

Trump is the early front-runner for the 2024 Republican nominee for president. The timing suggested by Willis would make the Georgia prosecution the last of his four criminal cases to go to trial. Ultimately, it will be up to Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee to set the trial date.

“I don’t, when making decisions about cases to bring, consider any election cycle or an election season. That does not go into the calculus. What goes into the calculus is: This is the law. These are the facts. And the facts show you violated the law. Then charges are brought,” Willis said.

Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead attorney in the Georgia case, declined to comment on Willis’ remarks.

Willis’ team on Tuesday filed an emergency request asking McAfee to issue a protective order to prevent any leaks of evidence, known as discovery, that the prosecution shares with the defense ahead of trial. McAfee has set a hearing on the motion for Wednesday afternoon.

The request came a day after the Post reported the details of video interviews with four people who have already pleaded guilty in the case — attorneys Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro and Jenna Ellis, and bail bondsman and Trump supporter Scott Hall. ABC News first published details and clips of the interviews with Powell and Ellis.

Prosecutors, who had previously requested a protective order to prevent the release of discovery in September, said the release of the recordings “is clearly intended to intimidate witnesses in this case.”

Former Georgia Republican Party chair David Shafer, joined by Trump and four other defendants, objected to prosecutors’ request, saying prosecutors had failed to show how it would “allegedly serve the purpose of protecting witnesses from alleged harm.” If the judge plans to impose a protective order, it should be limited to evidence considered “Sensitive Materials,” and defense attorneys should be able to contest that designation, Shafer’s attorneys wrote in a filing Tuesday.

The recorded statements had been shared with all remaining defense attorneys in the case. Going forward, prosecutors wrote, defendants and their lawyers will not receive copies of such recordings but will be able to watch them and take notes at the district attorney’s office.

Ellis told prosecutors that Dan Scavino, then Trump’s deputy chief of staff, told her in December 2020 that “the boss” didn’t plan to leave the White House after she expressed sorrow that none of the legal challenges to the election seemed to be panning out, according to news reports.

Chesebro told prosecutors about a previously unreported meeting at the White House during which he briefed the then-president on election challenges in Arizona and summarized his advice on a plan to assemble Republican slates of electors in several swing states that Biden had won, the Post reported.

Asked by prosecutors why Trump kept asking her for legal advice, Powell said, “Because we were the only ones willing to support his effort to sustain the White House. I mean, everybody else was telling him to pack up and go.”

Trump attorney Sadow dismissed the relevance of the recorded interviews and called for the case to be dismissed.

“Any purported private conversation is absolutely meaningless,” he said in an emailed statement. “The only salient and telling fact is that President Trump left the White House on January 20, 2021 and returned to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida.”

Shakeira Rucker, 37, was last seen around 7:30 p.m. Saturday leaving her home in the city with Cory Hill, a Winter Springs Police Department spokesperson said in a release. Hill, 51, was booked into the Orange County Jail Monday on multiple charges of attempted murder for a separate incident, but Rucker was not with him at the time.

“The family has not seen or heard from Shakeira . . . and believes that she may be in danger,” the Winter Springs Police Department statement said.

The attempted murder charges arose from a Sunday confrontation at Holly Creek Road in Zellwood, where Hill allegedly approached a woman and her family and fired shots at them, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. No injuries were reported.

Hill left the scene but was later arrested by Mount Dora police.

Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Shakeira Rucker is asked to contact investigator Tracy Fugate at 407-327-6561 or tfugate@winterspringsfl.org

.

Gregory Reed of Apopka, a father of four and a grandfather of two, was shot “multiple times” about 8:20 p.m. while in his vehicle outside the Circle K convenience store/gas station at Clarke and Silver Star roads, Ocoee police Lt.  Mireya Iannuzzi said.

“We do have some witnesses who have come forward that either saw something or heard something that pointed us in the direction of this vehicle,” Iannuzzi said, showing a grainy image of a white or silver Mercedes Benz SUV.

She said detectives believe at least two people were in the Mercedes.

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Reed’s daughter, Deidre Anderson, 38, described her dad as loving and a “big family man.” She pleaded for people with more information about the crime to call police.

For most of the press briefing, Reed’s mother, Alvetcher Jones, who celebrated her 80th birthday last Sunday with her son and other family, watched quietly in a chair against the wall of a Police Department conference room.

“Whoever did this needs to be found,” she said at the briefing’s conclusion.

Ocoee police urged anyone with information to call the investigative unit at 407-905-3160 or Crimeline at 800-423-TIPS (8477).

Ocoee police detective Jaswantie Devine said Reed was driving his vehicle, an older model Ford Explorer, past the gas pumps when he apparently was shot. His SUV crashed to a stop in the adjoining parking lot of a Publix grocery.

Investigators were sorting through video from store security cameras and other surveillance cameras but were uncertain what prompted the shooting. “It could have been maybe something as simple as somebody cut somebody off,” Iannuzzi said.

She said there was a brief exchange between Reed and occupants of the Mercedes before the shooting.

Iannuzzi said detectives don’t believe Reed knew his assailant.

“We desperately want to bring justice to this family,” she said. “This is just a violent encounter and we seemingly have no explanation, no reason why.”

Tyrone Scott, 59, a cousin, described Reed as a fishing buddy, Apopka youth football coach and an “awesome man.”

“You’ll never find a better guy than Greg Reed,” Scott said. “For someone to hurt this man like they did, it’s wrong. He didn’t deserve that. And I am mad that he had to be taken like that [because of] someone being selfish.”

“I know he’s in heaven right now, that’s my belief.”

shudak@orandosentinel.com

His school projects covered in crayon scribbles and glitter. Achievement ribbons of purple, blue and red. His old license plate, now plastered to a poster board, that reads “H Boon.”

Accumulated over two decades, the items are memories that were tucked away earlier, meant to inspire nostalgia.

Now, on Monday afternoon, his family picked through the puzzle pieces of his life, days ahead of his funeral.

The house was full of family — his parents, aunts, uncles, his twin sister — all set on their tasks planning the memorial service.

Boonstoppel, 20, was fatally shot Oct. 29 after a fight broke out in Ybor City during the weekend before Halloween. A 14-year-old boy was also shot and killed and 16 other people were injured in a shooting that is one of the worst in Tampa history.

By all early accounts, Boonstoppel was an innocent bystander who arrived in Ybor City with friends just minutes before shots rang out and was not involved with the fight.

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That Boonstoppel lived to 20 was in many ways remarkable. He was born premature and doctors weren’t sure he’d leave the maternity ward alive. He endured a litany of medical conditions, including a hearing disorder. He needed a feeding tube through his early years. He received extra attention at school for learning difficulties.

He overcame those challenges and was becoming an impressive young man, his parents said. He was taking college classes and talking of a career.

That he was starting to thrive as a young adult, then died in a flash, is an added layer of tragedy for his parents.

“It really is just, you can’t even think about it too long,” said his mother, Brucie Boonstoppel. “You’ve got to cry and scream and wail and then, to the point where you just have to shut your mind off.”

A challenging childhood

Harrison Boonstoppel and his twin sister, Ava, were born five weeks early. Harrison came out first. He weighed about 5 pounds.

“He was as big as my hand,” said his father, Karel Boonstoppel, 57.

A staph infection kept him in the hospital for 40 days. When released, he struggled to eat and was placed on a feeding tube. He would need the device, which was decorated with a Mickey Mouse pad, until he was 3.

His mother waited until the twins’ first birthday to poke a stork sign in the front yard announcing their births because she was so uncertain that Harrison would survive.

Despite it all, Harrison was a playful toddler. A family photo shows a grinning, blue-eyed boy with brownish hair tinged with red, holding a lizard. It also shows the feeding tube attached to his stomach and him supported by leg braces.

The family noticed that the boy had trouble talking and doctors discovered he had a hearing disorder. He wore hearing aids for several years, then got a cochlear implant at 5.

“They were a lot of years of sadness because we didn’t know exactly what was going on,” said Brucie Boonstoppel, 65. “If we knew what we knew now, then of course it would have been a lot better, but they’re not bad memories.”

Harrison spent hours every week in various kinds of therapy — speech, physical, occupational.

He attended Roosevelt Elementary, where he received extra help from teachers, then went to junior high at Pepin Academies, which focuses on special education. He weighed just 60 pounds when he started middle school.

The medical problems didn’t dampen an adventurous spirit.

“He was a daredevil when he could do his walking, and when he finished his therapies, he was just crazy,” his mother said.

The neighbors knew him as “that boy.” That boy dashing by on a scooter. That boy steering a go-kart. That boy doing wheelies on his skateboard.

He went through some growth spurts during his high school years, when he finally got taller than his sister. He graduated in 2022, and began taking classes at Hillsborough Community College.

He’d grown out of go-karts by then and had graduated to his prized car, a blue Subaru WRX.

It was a connection between Harrison and his father.

“Harrison and I, we’re just as crazy about cars, each of us,” Karel Boonstoppel said.

In recent weeks, father and son had talked about what Harrison may want to do careerwise. His mother owned a dance studio and his father is an information technology consultant.

Harrison said he wanted to be a mechanic, maybe a photographer, possibly a house flipper. There was still time to figure it out.

He had just gotten a haircut, moving on from the floppy, side-swept style he sported during his teens for a cropped cut, the hair pushed away from his forehead.

Though there were periods when he fell out of touch with his siblings, who had spent years away from home at college, he had recently reached out to them to say how much he missed them while they were away.

The family took steps to keep tabs on one another, particularly Harrison. They installed a tracking app called Life360 on everyone’s phone. The family often used it when Harrison went on hiking trips or other adventures with his car.

On the night of the shooting, his father checked the app around 11:30 p.m. Harrison was out with friends and the app showed his location near the Gandy Bridge.

“I didn’t check beyond 11:30,” his father said. “I decided that he is 20 years old, and at some point there’s going to be some nights when we aren’t going to know where he is.”

In the early hours of that morning, his parents were awakened by a knock on the door and Prince, their dog, barking.

It was one of Harrison’s friends.

“He said it right away,” Brucie Boonstoppel recalled of opening the door. “There was a shooting in Ybor. Harrison was hit.”

“Now he was in this room, with this curtain”

The friend said Harrison had been taken to Tampa General Hospital. The Boonstoppels dressed and ran out the door.

They looked at the tracking app on their phone, and it confirmed what Harrison’s friend told them: He was at Tampa General.

They called the hospital and were told he wasn’t there. They went anyway.

Tampa General was on lockdown when they arrived. The Ybor shooting had put the hospital on high alert, and people, many still in Halloween costumes, were trying to get in to check on friends and loved ones who had been shot.

After about an hour, they were led down long hallways, away from the emergency or surgery wings, to a room with a couch and a tissue box. They dreaded what might come next.

A doctor and other hospital staff stepped inside and told them that by the time Harrison had arrived at the hospital, there was nothing they could do.

“That was really the most difficult thing, because now, from thinking that maybe he was shot in the leg, just thinking maybe they were working on him in the emergency room, or surgery — that he’s fighting for his life, like those gradual things,” his father said. “Now he was in this room, with this curtain.”

The doctor asked the parents if they would like to see their son. They didn’t have much time. His body was evidence. An autopsy would need to be done. A killer was on the loose.

Karel Boonstoppel held his son’s hand, leaned down and kissed his forehead.

Parents piece together that night

The parents have since pieced together some of what happened that night — partially based on the tracker.

The device showed that Harrison and his friends arrived in Ybor at 2:36 a.m. They wanted to drive their cars around to show them off, but the streets were blocked. They got out instead.

The first shots rang out at 2:45 a.m.

Harrison and his friends dropped to the ground seeking cover. Tampa police officers arrived moments later and told them they could get up. Harrison’s friends rose. Harrison did not.

He had no pulse. Paramedics quickly got there, revived him and loaded him into an ambulance, the parents said.

He arrived at the hospital at 3:10 a.m. His parents believe he was dead before he got there.

It’s the reason they think the hospital didn’t have a record of him when they called, because he never had the chance to be a patient there.

An autopsy report says Harrison was shot three times — in the spleen, liver and heart, his mother said.

The Tampa Police Department has made one arrest in the shooting. Tyrell Phillips, 22, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of the 14-year-old boy, who has been identified by his family as Elijah Wilson.

According to court records, Phillips told police he argued with a group of people, who he said included Wilson, on Seventh Avenue that morning and opened fire because he feared for his safety.

Police said at least two more people also fired guns during the fight. It’s unclear who fired the bullets that killed Harrison.

Harrison’s family said police have not told them much about the investigation. Though they’d like to know more, it’s not their top priority.

“Everybody has been wonderful, the police, you know just heartfelt apologies, everybody,” his mother said. “But when they were saying we’re going to get the guy, at first, I’m like, ‘Can you get my son back to me?’”

A grieving family seeks hope

As the sun set on Monday, the Boonstoppel family squeezed together on their back porch. They were on a phone call with Community Foundation Tampa Bay to discuss setting up a fund in Harrison’s name.

They want it to support health and safety for children.

They hope the tragedy can produce something positive.

The family was buoyed by a photo Harrison’s friends sent them of his initials they had carved into a tree. And they found solace knowing Harrison’s cochlear implant equipment will go to use after it’s donated to someone who needs it.

The family also wants to promote gun control and safety. Brucie Boonstoppel previously marched for gun control. She recently spoke at a vigil in Ybor for the victims of the shooting.

In memory of her son, she wants to do more.

“I can’t be that person that’s given up on the world and the hope for the future,” she said. “I’ve just got to do it. Whether it affects it or not, that is going to complete my life.”

DeAndre Eugene Florence, 23, is facing first-degree murder and racketeering charges following the December 2018 killing of Alejandro Vargas Martinez.

“These five years have been very hard for us,” said Alejandro’s aunt Dolka Martinez, as his mother stood beside her in silence holding a photo of the slain teenager. “We think about Ale every single day. We talk about Ale every single day. There’s not one day that passes where we don’t mention Ale. Losing a loved one is very painful, extremely painful. Especially the way we lost Ale. They say time heals but to be honest, it does not.  It’s just a patch to a broken heart. You just have to live with it.”

Alejandro was killed on Dec. 18, 2018 around 6:30 a.m. According to Det. Brian Savelli, who investigated the case, Florence, who was 18 at the time, shot and killed Alejandro while attempting to steal his cell phone as the teenager walked to school. Another suspect in the case, Denim Williams, was only 16 at the time of the killing. The second suspect was shot to death during another robbery weeks after Alejandro was killed.

“Alejandro ‘Alex’ Vargas Martinez was walking to Boone High School like he did every single day, just like all these high school kids you see every single day, on his phone talking to his mom when he was robbed, shot and left to die in the street,” Sheriff John Mina said at a press conference Friday morning.

Mina said Florence was a suspect “from the very beginning” but it took years to build a case against him. The case was revived when the Attorney General’s Office launched a cold case unit to examine long-open homicide investigations. Deputies submitted Alejandro’s case and a statewide probe not only connected Florence to Alejandro’s death but also led to racketeering charges related to a series of other robberies, commercial burglaries and car thefts in Orange and Seminole counties that date back to late 2018 and early 2019, court records show.

“Throughout the five years, there have been nine crimes we were able to link so that takes a little time to piece together and actually prepare a decent case,” Savelli said. “So although he’s been a main suspect for years, it takes time to piece forensics, interviews and things of that nature together to come up with a good case.”

Savelli said others may “potentially” be arrested. The gun used to kill the teenage victim was never found, he said.

Alejandro’s family said they have been waiting for an arrest to be announced for years but they never lost faith that his killer would one day face charges.

“We know that the truth is more powerful than anything and we know that justice was on it’s way to be served,” Martinez said.

Simon Nicholas Lowry, 24, of Gainesville is facing two misdemeanor counts of criminal mischief involving the incident at Alpha Epsilon Pi, according to a sworn complaint filed by university police in Alachua County Circuit Court. Police said this week that Lowry admitted vandalizing the sign last month after they saw him on surveillance cameras they had placed in the area.

In an interview Friday, Lowry declined to discuss the charges against him “at this moment.” He said he planned to provide a written statement next week that would explain his actions. He also said has been reading news reports about the criminal case against him.

Lowry was a graduate teaching assistant in UF’s Department of Astronomy and a member of UF’s Graduate Assistant Union. Two of the organization’s members were arrested in March after they were accused of tearing down an anti-abortion sign by a group demonstrating on campus.

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The fraternity’s flag, which said “AEPi stands with Israel,” was vandalized last month. The incident was among cases around the U.S. of anti-Semitic or anti-Israel actions protesting Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas.

“This student’s actions were deliberate and unacceptable and will not be tolerated at the University of Florida,” campus Police Chief Linda Stump-Kurnick said in a statement. “Free speech is protected. Vandalism is not. And we will do our very best to ensure that the University of Florida is a welcoming place for all.”

The police department said that, in addition to the criminal misdemeanor charges, Lowry’s case was being referred to the Office of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution. It said he was banned from campus for three years unless he successfully appealed the trespass order.

This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications.