The 19-year-old accused of fatally shooting three people, including a TV reporter and a 9-year-old girl, in Florida was a “known gang member” with a long rap sheet that included arrests for grand theft and domestic violence. According to the charges, officers and their criminal background.
Keith Melvin Moses was taken into custody Wednesday evening after the massacre in the Pine Hills area, a community of about 66,000 just west of Orlando.
Musa, armed with a Glock 40, allegedly shot a woman he met around 11 a.m., returned to the scene hours later and shot a TV reporter and a policeman before entering the house and shooting the woman and her 9-year-old daughter. Shots were fired at the photojournalist. The first lady, a TV reporter and a 9-year-old girl died. The girl’s mother and photojournalist have been admitted to the hospital in critical condition.
Orange County Sheriff John Mina said the suspect was a “known gang member”, but the shooting was not gang related.
But questions remain about purpose. Meena said the cause of the shooting is under investigation and the suspect has so far been uncooperative.
The accused has a long criminal history since the age of 14
According to his criminal record by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Moses had a rap sheet dating back to January 2018, when he was 14, and stretching to 2022.
His most serious charges include grand theft, battery-domestic violence and armed robbery.
He was arrested in January 2018 on a felony theft of a motor vehicle charge, which was amended to a misdemeanor in Orange County Court. He pleaded no contest and in February 2018 was sentenced to one year of community control, which is essentially house arrest. Under community control, according to the Florida Department of Corrections, a person is confined to the home outside of work, school, public service hours and other officer-approved activities.
That same month, Moses was arrested and charged with domestic violence battery, touch or strike, records show. He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to a concurrent year of community control.
In 2015, he was arrested for burglary, pleaded not guilty, and the case was dismissed.
In later years, he was arrested after allegedly resisting an officer and violating the conditions of his imposed release, according to records. He was re-arrested several times for failing to appear in court on charges.
Moses was arrested in 2018 on a charge of robbery with a weapon, which was modified in court to attempted robbery with a firearm. He pleaded not guilty and was ordered a concurrent sentence of “low-risk residential restraint commitment level”.
In 2021, he was arrested for violating his imposed conditions and charged with possessing less than 20 grams of marijuana, which was a misdemeanor. The case was eventually dropped.
She was recently arrested again by Orlando police on April 28 for failing to appear in court, according to publicly available data.
Monique H. Worrell, State Attorney for the Ninth Judicial Circuit, addressed her juvenile conviction on Thursday.
“There’s been a lot of conversation about, ‘Well, why was he on the street?'” she said. “Florida law prohibits me from discussing the details of any juvenile disposition … as to the conviction.”
He explained that under the current law, the Juvenile Justice Department has jurisdiction when a child is sentenced.
“This means that neither the court nor the state’s attorney’s office has a say in what the program ultimately is or how long a child is placed in a program,” Worrell said.
She noted that the suspect’s only adult offense was possession of marijuana. Her office did not charge him because when the amounts are so small, “the Florida Department of Law Enforcement does not test the substance and that means the state attorney’s office cannot prove a case.”
She said she has proposed to legislators that juvenile justice rules be changed to allow children to be placed in juvenile programs.
How did the shooting incident happen?
Moses was arrested on Wednesday evening, has been charged with preliminary murder. Mina said Thursday she was confident the suspect would be charged for the subsequent killings.
Mina said Thursday that Moses shot the woman he found, later identified as Nathacha Augustin, 38, at around 11 a.m. while she was sitting in a car with a friend.
According to the arrest warrant, Augustin was traveling in a car with her friend when the driver spotted the suspect, Moses, walking down the street.
The driver told the deputy the suspect “seemed down” and offered him a ride.
Moses got into the backseat of the car, sitting behind Augustin, and just 30 seconds later, according to the arrest warrant, the driver heard a “loud bang” and saw Augustin bleeding. The warrant said the driver stopped the vehicle and called police, and Moses fled the scene.
The driver said he did not hear any argument between the suspect and the victim and “do not know each other.”
Mina had previously stated that Moses was an “acquaintance” of Augustine.
Mina said Moses returned about four hours later, around 4 p.m., and shot Spectrum News 13 reporter Dylan Lyons and photojournalist Jesse Walden, who were in or near a vehicle. Lyons was killed and Walden was hospitalized in critical condition Wednesday evening.
Musa then went to a house in the area and shot the mother and daughter. The child, Tayona Major, died, and her mother, who has not been identified, was in critical condition late Wednesday.
It is not clear what motivated the shooting. Moses had no direct connection to Augustin, nor to the reporters, or to Tyona and her mother.
Mina said witnesses identified him as the suspect who shot him and he was also caught on video footage at the scene of the massacre.
He was found by deputies, and was uncooperative when taken into custody.
Mina said authorities recovered a gun – a Glock 40 automatic handgun empty and “hot to the touch” – believed to have been used in the shooting. The sheriff said it was unclear how he got the gun.
They said that Musa was taken to the hospital claiming that he was injured, where he fought with the hospital staff and had to be restrained. When he was taken to the sheriff’s office for an interview, he “pretended to be asleep” and was not cooperative. Mina said that at one point, he physically resisted the officers and had to be subdued.
Mina said Thursday that the suspect “isn’t talking to us.”
Moses waived his initial appearance in court Thursday afternoon and ordered him to remain in jail without bond, not to contact any witnesses and family members, and not to possess a gun, knife or weapon.
