Third Man Caught in Fatal Shooting: Authorities: Stacy B. Brown Was Planning to Leave for Orlando When He Was Nabbed at a Motel
By Jill Nolin, Northwest Florida Daily News, Fort Walton Beach
Jan. 6–FORT WALTON BEACH — The third suspect in a fatal shooting during a home invasion robbery has been found, the Okaloosa County Sheriff ‘s Office has announced. Stacy Bernard Brown, a 21-yearold Fort Walton Beach man, was tracked down Thursday night at the Dolphin Inn Motel in Fort Walton Beach.
“They (investigators) developed information that he was trying to leave town for Orlando,” said sheriff ‘s spokeswoman Michele Nicholson.
Brown has been charged with an open count of murder, kidnapping and home invasion robbery for the double shooting that killed 41-yearold Jonathan Jones and wounded 29-year-old Samuel Vann Burns.
Two other men, 24-year-old Marcus Lee Gray, and 27-year-old Abraham Alex Evans, are also in custody. Gray is also charged with an open count of murder, kidnapping and home invasion robbery.
Evans is charged with accessory after the fact to murder, accessory before/after the fact to home invasion robbery and accessory before/ after the fact to kidnapping.
Gray attended Silver Sands School for mentally handicapped students for much of his life, according to his uncle Barry Gray.
Barry Gray said an evaluation done about 10 years ago showed his nephew had the mental capacity of a second-grader.
The two talked on the telephone Thursday.
“He sounded like a little baby on the phone,” Barry Gray said. “He doesn’t even understand the magnitude of what’s going on.”
Barry Gray said he found his nephew walking on a street hours after the shootings occurred Wednesday morning. He said he talked his nephew into getting in the car and turning himself in to sheriff’s deputies the same day.
Sheriff ‘s investigators say Marcus Gray and Brown killed Jones while stealing a 3-foot-by-3-foot safe from Burns’ house trailer in Bay Cove Mobile Home Park.
Burns was wounded and taken to a hospital in Mobile, Ala. Evans earlier drove the two men to Jones’ apartment on Rockport Court, where Jones was robbed and kidnapped, according to a Sheriff’s Office report. Gray and Brown then forced Jones at gunpoint to drive them in his GMC van to Burns’ home, where the shootings occurred, the report stated.
Gray and Brown then met Evans at another home, where they sawed up the safe and retrieved several watches, cocaine and $2,500 in cash, according to the report. The safe was found in a nearby ditch. The contents are still missing.
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Copyright (c) 2007, Northwest Florida Daily News, Fort Walton Beach
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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