The following story was previously published on Lake Legal News.
OCALA NATIONAL FOREST, Florida — An Ocala man is being held in the Lake County Jail on two counts of attempted murder and two counts of robbery with a firearm stemming from a 2018 drug deal gone bad.
According to a probable cause affidavit, on Sept. 27, 2018, Dexavion J’Neil Brown, who was 18 years old at the time, set up a meeting with a man he met in the juvenile justice system in 2017, to trade methamphetamine for a gun and $300. The pair agreed to meet at the intersection of County Road 445 and National Forest Road 18, a remote area near Alexander Springs, to make the exchange.
The victim, along with another man who was sitting in the passenger seat and a woman who was sitting in the back seat, were at the meeting location when Brown and an unidentified male pulled up. Brown walked over to the driver’s side window and spoke to man he knew from the juvenile justice system. Suddenly, Brown started shooting the man he knew and the male in the passenger seat, according to the affidavit. The driver suffered two gunshot wounds, one to the neck and one to the head and the passenger was shot six times in his head and upper torso. Both men were airlifted to Central Florida Regional Medical Center in critical condition.
The female in the back seat told a Lake County Sheriff’s Office detective she could smell gunpowder as she hid behind the passenger seat and pleaded with the unidentified male not to kill her. He told her, “Shut up, (expletive,)” and she fled from the vehicle into the woods. Brown took a cell phone, keys and a gun and fled the scene.
Brown was identified by the victim he personally knew, and in a photo line-up by a witness and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Brown was transported to the Lake County Jail by the Marion County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday. He is being held on $200,000 bond.
