As seen on newly released body camera video, an Orange County Sheriff’s Office deputy, in the midst of arresting a Florida man wanted for killing three people including a young girl and a Spectrum news reporter, voiced a wish to kill the suspect, later identified as 19-year-old Keith Melvin Moses.
“They should just let us take him out back and kill him,” said the point-of-view official in one of the videos.
A fellow deputy had just expressed sadness regarding the youngest victim, T’Yonna Major, 9, who had been fatally shot. “That little girl, man, if she doesn’t make it….” he said, trailing off and shaking his head.
The State Attorney’s Office of the Ninth Judicial Circuit released the footage. The sheriff’s office said there is an internal investigation into the killing statement.
“Once that investigation is completed, it will be public,” the Orange County Sheriff’s Office told Law&Crime. “We have nothing to add beyond that.”
You can see the encounter in the embed above, starting at about 0:18.
Deputies claim it was Moses who engaged in the bloody, hours-long shooting spree on Feb. 22, 2023. First, he allegedly shot and killed Nathacha Augustin, 38, after he was invited to get into a car she was riding in with another man.
Moses got in the back behind Augustin, the other man riding in the car told police. According to documents, the driver did not hear Moses and Augustin argue, and they did not know one another before this incident. But after 30 seconds, the driver heard a “bang” and saw blood on the woman’s face.
He pulled over and Moses allegedly fled the scene. Investigators arrived to find Augustin on her stomach outside the passenger side of a white Hyundai. She had been shot on the left side of her chin.
Hours later in the afternoon, Spectrum News 13 reporter Dylan Lyons, 24, and photojournalist Jesse Walden, 29, were at the scene, covering Augustin’s death. Deputies said Moses approached and shot them too.
Lyons was found in the front passenger seat of a white Ford Escape, and Walden had been by the vehicle’s trunk. Investigators claim that the round that struck Lyons entered his left arm, exited the limb to enter his chest, and exited his chest to lodge in his right arm. That was consistent with Moses standing outside the driver’s side and firing into the vehicle, authorities said.
Keith Melvin Moses shot and killed Nathacha Augustin, 38, T’Yonna Major, 9, and Spectrum News 13 reporter Dylan Lyons, 24, according to deputies. (Mugshot: Orange County Sheriff’s Office)
Around the same time, Moses allegedly entered Major’s home and shot the child twice in the torso while her mother was napping.
The mother said she “woke up to T’Yonna Major yelling, ‘HE SHOT ME!’ as she ran into her room and jumped into her bed,” investigators wrote.
As the mother woke up, she heard two gunshots and felt like she was being shot in the arm. She grabbed her daughter, and they barricaded themselves in the master bathroom until law enforcement arrived, according to the affidavit.
Moses pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder with a firearm, two counts of attempted first-degree murder with a firearm, and one count of armed burglary of a dwelling with a firearm.
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