A winding trail of clues
— including a YouTube rapper, code words and a camouflage bandana — led to the arrest of a suspect in a Sanford man’s Dec. 27 shooting death, police say.
A confidential informant, a camouflage bandana and a YouTube rapper were all pieces of a puzzle that ended with the arrest of a suspect in a Sanford homicide last week. During the months-long investigation, police were able to link two guns from three separate shootings that left five people injured and one dead.
Police on Thursday served an arrest warrant to 23-yearold Rovonte Daniels — who was already in jail on separate charges — in connection to the December shooting of Lester Inman.
On Dec. 27, Inman was found lying near the intersection of Terry Lane and Scott Drive in Sanford’s Washington Oaks neighborhood — dead with a single gunshot wound to the back of his head.
Witnesses reported seeing a red Hyundai Sonata driving slowly down the road before Inman was killed, court documents show. One witness told police they saw Inman riding his bicycle toward the car, then hastily pedaling in the opposite direction before gunshots rang out. Police say 15 shell casings were on the ground a block away from Inman’s body.
More than a week later, on Jan. 8, Inman’s brother Titus Manning was outside his home when a red car pulled up. Manning told police that one passenger, whom he identified as Daniels, pulled out a rifle with a scope and laser attachment. While Daniels was holding the rifle, the magazine detached and fell to the ground. Manning picked up the clip and handed it back — but not before removing a single bullet, according to court documents.
The round was a 5.56 caliber bullet — the same type of ammunition found near Inman’s body. Manning gave the bullet to police.
Analysts from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement later discovered that the shell casings found near Inman’s body matched those found at the scene of a shootout between cars near Orlando’s tourist district on New Year’s Eve. Five people were shot — including one man who was shot in the face and another who was left paralyzed, police said.
Shell casings from a 5.56 caliber rifle and .45 caliber handgun were found on the road. The 5.56 caliber casings were fired from the same gun that killed Inman, police said.
An FDLE report also found a “potential association” between the .45 caliber casings and shells found at the scene of yet another shooting in Sanford on Aug. 26, 2017. The windows on a house on the 1500 block of West 15th Street were shot out. Nobody was injured and several .45 caliber casings were found on the ground, police said.
Daniels had lived at that house with his mother, according to police.
He had been arrested on a fleeing and eluding warrant on Feb. 26. When Sanford Police Investigator Brent Flanagan asked Daniels where he was the night Inman was murdered, Daniels said that he was
asleep, according to court documents.
“How the [expletive] was I in Washington Oaks when I was at home asleep?” Daniels said, according to investigators.
Daniels denied involvement with the Dec. 31 shooting in Orlando, but told Flanagan that his house had recently been shot up during a shootout, police said.
While Daniels was locked up in the Seminole County Jail, police began monitoring his phone calls. In several calls in late February and early March, he could be heard discussing his alibi for the Inman shooting, according to court documents.
In one call on March 1, Daniels asked a man named “Black” if Daniels’ “auntie” could be “put in hibernation” at Black’s house. Hours later, he called the same number and asked if his “Aunt Shirley” — which police believed was a code word used for the rifle in the Inman homicide — had been taken down the road. The caller on the other end of the line had a hard time understanding who Aunt Shirley was.
“You so damn stupid, you acting like you don’t know who Auntie Shirley, Auntie Suzanne is,” Daniels said according to court documents.
Authorities later discovered “Black” was a 38-year-old man named Aaron Wesley Thomas. Throughout late February and early March, authorities used a confidential informant to go to Thomas’ house on West 15th Street — which is less than 300 feet from where Daniels lives — to buy marijuana, court documents show.
Police were able to secure a search warrant on Thomas’ house, which was executed on March 6. Sanford police found marijuana, drug paraphernalia and three guns — one of them being a Mossberg 5.56 caliber
Police on Thursday served an arrest warrant to 23-year-old Rovonte Daniels — who was already in jail on separate charges — in connection to the December shooting of Lester Inman.
rifle, according to authorities.
The rifle was wrapped in a blanket with attachments similar to those described by Manning, Inman’s brother. A camouflage bandana was tied around the weapon. When investigators processed the weapon for fingerprints, they found prints belonging to 23-year-old Daron Comer, according to police.
Police say that Comer is a Sanford rapper who goes by “Jaba.” In several YouTube videos with titles including “Manslaughter” and “Splat,” men can be seen holding rifles, including the one authorities found during the search warrant. In one video, a man is seen wearing a camouflage bandana. In another, a person is seen stirring 5.56 caliber rounds in a pot.
In late March, FDLE tests confirmed that the rifle was used in the New Year’s Eve shooting and in Inman’s murder, according to authorities. Police were also able to trace Daniels’ phone, and discovered he was near the scene of the Inman shooting and the Orlando shooting.
Daniels is being held without bond on a charge of first-degree murder.