Editor’s Note: The News Herald is publishing its annual countdown and update of the top 10 stories of the year. These were the stories reporters and editors felt were the most important in Bay County in 2014. The series will end on New Year’s Day with the top story of the year.
PANAMA CITY — One of the bullets burrowed into a green Toyota Camry outside a tiny, ramshackled Panama City home. Another found its way to the chest of a 21-year-old man.
There in the driveway along a residential street, Christopher Coleman would collapse, and he would later be pronounced dead from the gunshot wounds.
Little has been released in the Oct. 18 death investigation. A suspected reason for Coleman’s death and most of the evidence from the scene has not been released to the public, because no arrests have been made.
“Intricate details of active investigations are not public record and no agency will jeopardize the identification, apprehension or successful prosecution of offenders,” said Panama City Police Chief Scott Ervin.
Coleman’s case is one of many in a year marred by an unprecedented amount of bloodshed in Bay County. While FDLE records show there were eight murders in all of Bay County in 2013, three of which occurred in Panama City, a rash of at least nine shooting deaths plagued Panama City alone this year, though gun-related violence was not constrained to the county seat.
A full accounting of all 2014 homicides in Bay County had not been made available as of Tuesday afternoon, but court records show at least 20 people have been charged so far in connection with a homicide in 2014.
A common theme did not emerge from all of the shootings, but most were influenced by the pursuit or effects of illegal substances, according to Bob Sombathy, the state’s prosecutor for a majority of the cases.
“It is senseless killing,” Sombathy said. “It doesn’t seem to be related by anything more than stupidity and drugs.”
While many of the accused are approaching their day in court, for some of the most recent victims, their surviving families have yet to see an arrest.
Summer violence
One of the city’s first shooting deaths in a string of summer slayings is rapidly approaching a court date. Notices of attorneys taking witness depositions in the murder case of 38-year-old Leonard Price was announced Monday by state prosecutors. The trial is scheduled for February.
Price, of Panama City, was shot multiple times in the chest and torso at close range in the yard of a Carver Road home early May 28. Residents of Roosevelt Drive reported hearing gunshots ring out at about 12:30 a.m.
Police wrongfully arrested 28-year-old Michael Ray Davis and charged him with the murder. The charges were dropped in August, and investigators filed second-degree murder charges against 33-year-old Stephen Trusty, Davis’ brother who had been living at the same residence. An unnamed eyewitness who had intimate knowledge of the crime scene identified Trusty as the suspected shooter, police said.
A series of competency evaluations slowed the trial’s progress. However, Trusty was deemed competent to proceed in November. Though a motive has not been released, prosecutors have said the shooting escalated from an argument over a bicycle while the parties involved were under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
A separate charge of tampering with a witness was filed against Trusty before depositions began. He was charged with allegedly threatening a family member of the witnesses. Trusty told the witness he would beat the murder charges — and anyone who cooperated with law enforcement, according to court documents.
The charge against Trusty would foreshadow the developments in the death investigation of 24-year-old Tavish Greene, who himself witnessed a shooting death.
Greene slaying
Greene had been dead several days before July 24, when police found his body in the trunk of a white 2004 Chevy Malibu behind an abandoned home at 526 E. Eighth Court.
Family members said he had been receiving death threats before he disappeared July 20, but police were reluctant to release a missing persons report. PCPD was alerted to the vehicle at about 11 a.m. the day after BCSO issued a report. Inside the trunk, they found Green shot multiple times.
Police scrambled to make an arrest in the murder of a key witness they’d interviewed only about two months earlier.
Darryl Mack, 21, Tyricka Shavon Woullard, 20, and Dontavis Terrell Thomas, 22, were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit armed robbery for an alleged scheme. Mack and Woullard fled to Georgia as police discovered Greene’s decomposing body.
Police reports said the three suspects lured Greene to Woullard’s residence at 3710 W. 21st St., where they planned to rob him the morning of July 19. Thomas and Mack allegedly used phone calls and text messages to draw Greene into a trap through Woullard, his ex-girlfriend. The three hid inside, waiting to ambush Greene for money and illegal narcotics, police reported.
Since then, Thomas has pleaded no contest to charges of being an accessory to murder. He could receive a sentence of five years probation in exchange for his testimony against Woullard and Mack.
In a bizarre turn of events, prosecutors in the case demanded Mack’s previous attorney also testify against Mack for allegedly threatening to harm Thomas. The involved parties met Dec. 11 to hear the state’s case for disclosing the privileged attorney-client discussions, but that hearing has been sealed from public view.
Greene’s death was the crescendo in a building wave of gun violence, but it wouldn’t be the last.
Hunt slaying
Following the summer’s heated exchange of gun violence, the youngest group of individuals to be charged in connection to a shooting death was chased across the city.
Javares R. Cameron, 18, Capri Brooks, 14, and Isiah C. Grady, 15, were arrested and charged with a role in the killing of 17-year-old Curtis Hunt. He was shot in the head with a semi-automatic handgun while sitting outside a residence in the 200 block of Kraft Avenue on Oct. 15 at about 1:15 p.m. However, Panama City Police were seeking four suspects after the shooting.
The three suspects, all of Panama City, were arrested across town at the Royal Arms Garden Apartments on Balboa Avenue, while another suspect fled that area on foot and has not been seen by authorities since.
Hunt died from the gunshot wound at a local hospital later that evening. What motivated the shooting remains unclear, but police have stated they believe it was a “targeted attack of Hunt and not a random act of violence.”
Police have charged Cameron with an open count of murder, citing physical evidence and statements from the other suspects as cause to believe he fired the fatal shot.
According to arrest reports, Cameron’s shoe impressions were left on the roadside, approaching where officers discovered Hunt with a gunshot wound to the head. Cameron, Brooks, Grady and the fourth, unidentified suspect then fled the area in a blue Grand Marquis. Brooks allegedly took undisclosed evidence from the scene and, once apprehended, police found a firearm on him, authorities reported.
En route to the Royal Arms apartments, Grady allegedly overheard Cameron say: “I hit him,” Grady told police.
The two juveniles still are being prosecuted as such. Cameron is being held without bond, awaiting his day in court. He has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder.
The fourth suspected accomplice has not been tracked down.
Targeted attack
Similar to the Kraft Avenue slaying, days later a suspect would elude police in the shooting death of Coleman. He also would be killed in what authorities called a “targeted attack.”
People in the neighborhood who declined to give their names said they heard several gunshots and came outside to find Coleman bleeding in the driveway of 705 E. 13th Court. He had been shot in the chest at about 8:45 p.m. at least once. Coleman was rushed to the hospital, where he died.
No arrests have been made.
Coleman’s death brought the toll of gun-related slayings to nine in Panama City, most of which were concentrated to two areas.
Chief Ervin declined to give a reason for the dramatic increase in gun-related violence within the city. However, he indicated that police will respond as needed to the coming year’s criminal trends.
“This year we saw an increase in some violent crime categories while others were down,” Ervin said. “We adjust our resources to respond to the crime trends as they emerge and will do so based on what trends we see next year.”
Read past stories in the series below:
Top 10 of 2014:
