Michael David Dunn has been indicted by a grand jury on a charge of first-degree murder in the Nov. 23 shooting of 17-year-old Jordan Davis.
The State Attorney's Office said Thursday night it would not seek the death penalty in the case. If found guilty, Dunn would be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Dunn, who was indicted Thursday, had been charged with second-degree murder.
In Florida, a first-degree murder charge can only be approved by a grand jury.
Authorities said Dunn, 46, stopped at the Gate Food Post near Baymeadows Road where he opened fire on a Dodge Durango with four teenagers inside after complaining of their loud music and saying he saw a gun. Davis was killed.
Also added were three counts of attempted murder because he might have shot the other three teenagers.
The Davis family is having a vigil Saturday at Friendship Fountain.
Watch news coverage of the Davis murder here:
But discrepancies have already surfaced in Dunn’s story.
Mr. Dunn told his lawyer that he fired his handgun eight times on Nov. 23 only after one of the four teenagers in a car threatened him and pointed a shotgun his way. Two of the gunshots killed the teenager, Jordan Davis, a high school senior who wanted to join the Marine Corps. But so far, Jacksonville law enforcement officers have not found a shotgun.
Jordan Davis’s father, Ron Davis, a retired Delta Air Lines employee, said he was not surprised.
“There wasn’t a gun,” Mr. Davis said in an interview. “They were just kids, 17-year-old kids. They have never been in trouble. The kids had no weapon, they had no drugs in the car.”
He said that Mr. Dunn, 45, who lives three hours south of Jacksonville in Satellite Beach and was in town for his son’s wedding, is trying to bolster a self-defense claim by placing a weapon in Mr. Davis’s son’s hands. Mr. Davis said he was told by a detective who questioned Mr. Dunn after his arrest in Satellite Beach that Mr. Dunn did not mention the threat of a gun in the interview. The police would not comment on the case.
“The detective told me that they interviewed him down there,” Mr. Davis said, adding that he did not want to name the detective. “There was no mention of a shotgun. The detective told me they checked and searched the car my son was in and no weapons were found in the car, no drugs were found in the car and no weapons were found in the area. He is trying to create that smokescreen.”
The shooting occurred outside a gas station-convenience store at 7:40 p.m. after a dispute over loud music. According to Mr. Dunn’s lawyer, Robin Lemonidis, Mr. Dunn was waiting in his car for his fiancée to come out of the store when he asked the teenagers parked next to him to turn down the radio. They did initially, he told his lawyer, but turned it back up. More words were exchanged. Then the teenagers cursed and threatened him, and one of them pointed a shotgun at him through a partly lowered window, the lawyer said.
Frightened, Mr. Dunn, a trained gun owner with a concealed-weapons permit, pulled a handgun out of his glove compartment, took it out of its holster and fired it — four bullets into the back door and then four more at the car as it pulled out of the gas station, Ms. Lemonidis said. Mr. Dunn, who did not call the police, was arrested the next day, in Satellite Beach, as he prepared to turn himself in, she said. Ms. Lemonidis said she believed the teenagers left the shooting scene briefly and could have disposed of the shotgun then.
But Mr. Davis said this chain of events does not square with the teenage son he helped raise along with his ex-wife, a former Delta flight attendant who lives in Marietta, Ga. The youth moved in with his father nearly two years ago, a decision he said made sense because his son was approaching manhood.
Jordan Davis, who had been home schooled during his middle school years because of his mother’s unpredictable work schedule, attended Wolfson High School in Jacksonville. On the night of the shooting, he was headed home from a mall. Mr. Davis said his son’s friends who were in the car recounted that Mr. Dunn grew angry at them and started shooting and that no one in their car had a gun.
“He always had a stable environment at home,” said Mr. Davis, who added that his son had no criminal record. At home, there were ground rules, he said: No tattoos. No shrugging off goals for the future. And no guns.
“I don’t have a gun in my house,” Mr. Davis said. “If I had an intruder, I could never pick up a gun to stop the intruder. No possession in my house is worth me picking up a handgun.”
“All these concealed weapons permits,” he added. “They give them out like Skittles. Anybody and everybody can have a handgun.”
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