We talk about turning lemons into lemonade routinely here at Guns Save Life. After all, we live in Illinois. But imagine turning banana pudding into felony murder. How senseless would that be? Yet for some illiterate gang thugs in Florida, that’s just what happened. And now one is crying the blues because his buddy got whacked and now he’s looking at spending the next forty or fifty Christmases locked in a cage. And there aren’t conjugal visits in Florida prisons.
Here’s how things went badly for a brain surgeon in training named Jabari.
In Miami Gardens, Florida, two enterprising young scholars decided a food delivery driver looked like easy money.
Spoiler alert: They forgot that the driver had a vote in the matter. And this driver exercised his right to vote like it meant something.
The pair approached the driver and tried to rob him at gunpoint. The driver, who just wanted to deliver an order of banana pudding, was apparently unimpressed with their career choice and professional skills. He produced his own firearm and abruptly ended the negotiation.
One suspect, 20-year-old Demetrius Tromain Travis, took multiple rounds, including at least one to the face. He was airlifted to the hospital where he was formally declared dead right there. Mogadishu wins. Again.
His “business” partner, identified as 19-year-old Jabari Joshua Thomas, did what so many young street entrepreneurs do when their business plan goes sideways: he ran like a little bitch.
Instead of sticking around to render aid to his downed partner, Thomas fled on foot toward a white vehicle, leaving his buddy behind like used toilet paper and an unflushed turd in the toilet bowl. Witnesses described the fleeing suspect as tall and slim with distinctive dreads and orange slides. Subtle.
Miami Gardens police issued a BOLO. License plate readers and good old-fashioned police work did the rest.
Thomas didn’t make it far. He was located in nearby Miramar and taken into custody. He now faces charges of second-degree felony murder and armed robbery and is being held without bond. Felony murder is a special kind of gift that keeps on giving – kind of like herpes – when your robbery partner is shot dead during the crime you both signed up for.
The delivery driver stayed on scene, cooperated with police, and by all accounts acted in lawful self-defense. He went home, sans his gun. But it’s Florida. He’s probably got another. One robber in the morgue. The other in jail with a new, more easily managed haircut in his future, courtesy of the Broward County jail.
Once again, an armed citizen turned a potential robbery into a cautionary tale. The streets keep providing free education. But some scholars eschew education, instead preferring to learn the hard way in blood—or friendship bracelets.