MONQUELL WIMBERLY - 16 yo (7/08) - / Convicted: Billy Sheppard and Rashard Evans - Jacksonville, FL

2 Charged In 2 Homicides In 4 Hours


Published On: Oct 14 2011 02:07:47 PM EDT   Updated On: Dec 02 2008 05:51:51 AM EST



JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -

Police have arrested two men on charges they killed two people -- one a 16-year-old boy -- on the morning of July 20.

At the beginning of what Jacksonville Sheriff's Office homicide Lt. Pat Ivey called a "violent crime spree," 39-year-old Patrick Stafford was shot and killed just before 6 a.m. during an attempted robbery in the front yard of a relatives house on Academy Street.

Just over four hours later, 16-year-old Monquell Wimberly was riding his bicycle on King Street when he was shot and killed from someone in a passing car.

Ivey said witnesses identified the car from which the shots were fired as one taken in a carjacking at a business at Tyler and Beaver streets that occurred between the two slayings.

Surveillance video of the carjacking along with witness statements provided police enough evidence to obtain warrants charging Rashard Evans, 20, and Billy Sheppard, 22, with first-degree murder.

Asked what motivated the shootings, Ivey said, "just plain meanness."

These slayings and two others occurred on the same day, prompting some city officials to call it "bloody Sunday." The following day, Sheriff John Rutherford said he needed a surge of new police officers to fight escalating violence in Jacksonville.

Sheppard has previous convictions for aggravated battery with a firearm, possession of a firearm on school property and being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. He went back to prison when he violated probation and got out in February 2007.

Police said Evans also has a history of arrests on violent offenses, including armed robbery, carjacking and possession of a firearm by convicted felon.

Both were being held without bond in the Duval County Jail.


http://www.news4jax.com/news/2-Charged-In-2-Homicides-In-4-Hours/2059874

Man convicted in 2 killings hours apart

Published On: Jan 13 2012 02:14:55 PM EST   Updated On: Jan 13 2012 02:20:09 PM EST



Jacksonville Sheriff's Office booking photo of Billy Sheppard
 
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -

A Jacksonville man was convicted Thursday of two murders that took place just hours apart the morning of July 20, 2008.


Billy Sheppard was found guilty of killing 39-year-old Patrick Stafford and 16-year-old Monquell Wimberly.

Stafford was shot to death in a robbery attempt in the 1600 block of Academy Street in Northwest Jacksonville.

Wimberly was killed in a drive-by shooting in the 100 block of King Street as part of a gang dispute.

Sheppard goes back to court next Friday for the penalty phase of his trial. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

That day in 2008 became known as "Bloody Sunday." There was a third, unrelated killing later on that day, followed by an unrelated police-involved fatal shooting of a robbery suspect who had stolen a police cruiser.


http://www.news4jax.com/news/Man-convicted-in-2-killings-hours-apart/7991690

Jacksonville man convicted of manslaughter then acquitted of murder in 2 killings in 1 morning



Evans A man was convicted of manslaughter in one killing and then acquitted in another that occurred just hours earlier in a West Jacksonville neighborhood. After approximately nine hours of deliberations, Rashard Antwan Evans, 23, was convicted for his involvement in the fatal shooting of 16-year-old Monquell Deshaun Wimberly as he rode his bicycle down…





http://gonebutnotforgotten.wordpress.com/category/court/murder-update/

Florida Supreme Court affirms Jacksonville murderer's death penalty; 2 were killed within hours

He had received leniency for a shooting when he was 14

By Andrew Pantazi  Thu, Sep 4, 2014 @ 7:40 pm | updated Thu, Sep 4, 2014 @ 10:19 pm

Sheppard

Billy Jim Sheppard Jr. deserves his death sentence, the Florida Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

Sheppard killed 39-year-old Patrick Stafford on a humid summer day in 2008 in Jacksonville. Stafford had been sleeping in a car. Sheppard was 21 then. Police found six shell casings near the body.

Then Sheppard and his partner, 20-year-old Rashard Antwan Evans, hijacked a car at gunpoint.

Then Sheppard killed Monquell Wimberly, 16. Police found six more shell casings near his body.

Wimberly was riding his bicycle before church.

While Sheppard waited for trial in jail, he asked an inmate for a favor: Could he kill the only witness? he asked, according to inmate Michael Roberts.

Roberts said Sheppard was part of a Paxon-area gang — PYC. Wimberly was from the Westside. He and Sheppard argued a few days before Wimberly’s death.

Sheppard shot Stafford because Stafford wouldn’t give up the car he was sleeping in, Roberts said.

In his appeal to the state Supreme Court, Sheppard argued the prosecution used hearsay — Evans’ girlfriend testified that Evans told her to send a message to Sheppard about a “package,” Sheppard told her it referred to a gun.

He also argued that an interrogation video with police made it sound like police could prove claims made in the interrogation.

Sheppard said it was wrong for a witness to talk about how she was afraid he would come after her.

Sheppard also said the jury was influenced. One juror accused another of announcing a guilty verdict to him before the trial ended. She was excused from the case, but Sheppard argued she might have shared her verdict with more jurors.

Sheppard said he doesn’t deserve death. The jury sentenced him to death, he said, because he was convicted for shooting someone when he was 14. That, he argued, wasn’t enough.

Evans meanwhile is serving 20 years for manslaughter.

The Supreme Court disagreed with Sheppard on every claim. He had killed two people within hours, and he’d been violent before. That, the court decided, deserved death.

Mark Caliel, who prosecuted the case, called it a particularly wicked case. He said he was glad the state Supreme Court upheld the death penalty.

He said if Sheppard hadn’t received leniency as a minor — not facing 25 years of prison time for shooting someone — then “he would not have been free to commit this crime spree.”

“It is something to reflect upon, especially when there is a great deal of debate out there about what do you do with young juvenile offenders,” Caliel said. “Perhaps we should not have been so lenient, but it’s real easy to say that looking through the lens of what did he do after the fact. … Perhaps not every 14-, 15-, 16-year-old is not worthy of rehabilitation.”

Sheppard had been prosecuted as an adult and was sentenced to four years in prison, but he violated probation and was sentenced to another year and a half, court records show.

After he came back from prison as a teenager, he lived with his sister, but she said prison changed him.

“He was different and would barricade himself in the bedroom and sleep a lot,” the Supreme Court opinion said. “… He lost his easygoing spirit.”


http://members.jacksonville.com/news/crime/2014-09-04/story/florida-supreme-court-affirms-jacksonville-murderers-death-penalty-2?utm_source=Morris%20Digital%20Works&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Jacksonville.com%3ALocalNewsStories