Man killed after wrong-way chase had dark past.
The man whose crime spree paralyzed Interstate 95 for nearly eight hours and the woman he killed both had histories with Florida courts.
Hugo Steven Selva, accused in two other shootings, and who caused mayhem with wrongway crashes on I-95, was romantically involved with Nicole Novak, according to their Facebook pages.
She served time in state prison, and he was accused of threatening to kill his grandmother.
Selva, 22, mortally wounded Novak, 26, in front of a Lake Worth convenience store Wednesday morning.
He then put her in his Nissan Rogue SUV, drove north to Southern Boulevard and sped into oncoming traffic on Interstate 95 in Lantana, where a Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Office deputy shot and killed him, that agency said.
Three motorists had “just about head-on” collisions with Selva’s Nissan, Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said then. Those drivers were taken to hospitals; their injuries were not believed to be life-threatening, according to the sheriff.
On Tuesday afternoon and in the early morning hours Wednesday — before the I-95 mayhem — Selva is also suspected of shooting and wounding two men: one in West Palm Beach, who was not named by police, and Anthony Fonti, 21, in Boynton Beach, a police spokeswoman for that city said.
Though the sheriff’s office
said Wednesday that Selva was linked to all three shootings, Boynton Beach police said Thursday its investigation had more work to do “to 100 percent confirm the connection.”
Both of the men injured by gunfire survived, according to authorities.
“We’re still trying to piece together yesterday’s events,” Corporal Eric Davis, spokesman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, said Thursday. “The investigation has a lot of tentacles with the cities of West Palm Beach and Boynton Beach, and the incidents that happened there.”
None of the police agencies involved has released a possible motive for the violence.
Novak served 28 months in prison after being convicted in Brevard County of burglary, grand theft, and possessing cocaine and a controlled substance, according to the Florida Department of Corrections website. She was released from custody in May 2016.
Selva’s grandmother, Marilyn Selva, 78, of Delray Beach, sought protection from him in a domestic violence petition she filed in December 2016. In it she alleged that Selva had a drug and alcohol problem and that he and Novak, who was on parole, would drop in on her and threaten her.
On more than two occasions, Selva took his grandmother’s phone to prevent her from calling police, was monitoring her calls and questioning her about each one, she wrote in her petition.
“Nicole and Hugo are draining me physically, emotionally and financially,” Marilyn Selva wrote. “He gets up close to my face and shouts at me, calls me Satan B----.”
Marilyn Selva also wrote that her grandson used her personal identification to apply for a loan without her consent; wanted her to withdraw $5,000 from her bank account and threatened to kill her and his sister “on multiple occasions.”
In January 2016, Selva had a butcher knife and said he would kill his grandmother, his sister and then himself, the petition says. A friend of Marilyn Selva brought her to a police station to file the petition.
The domestic violence case was settled or dismissed in February 2017, according to a court docket. Marilyn Selva did not respond to a phone message seeking comment about her grandson.
Davis, the sheriff’s spokesman, said though Novak and Selva named each other as relationship partners on Facebook, he could not confirm whether they were still romantically involved when Selva killed Novak.
Selva wrote that he attended Park Vista Community High School in Lake Worth, and at one time Novak had ties to Merritt Island, according to the social network. In some photographs Novak was pregnant and appeared smiling with Selva, and in others she was holding an infant. But Davis said detectives have not confirmed any of those details, including whether the child was Novak’s.
On Wednesday before Selva was shot, calls to 911 alerted police about the Nissan driving south in the northbound lanes of the highway, where cars were running off the road or crashing near Lantana.
The Nissan had entered the highway at Southern Boulevard and was in three, “just about head-on” collisions as it traveled south, Bradshaw said.
The last crash disabled the Nissan, which briefly caught fire. That’s when a Florida Highway Patrol trooper and Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputy approached the SUV on the interstate, the sheriff’s office said.
The trooper fired a stun gun at Selva but it had no effect on him, Bradshaw said Wednesday.
“Due to [the suspect’s] actions that he was performing in the car, the deputy said that he was in fear for his life and the life of the trooper, and opened fire and killed the suspect inside,” Bradshaw said then.
The sheriff would not describe what Selva did that prompted the deputy to use deadly force.
“It was enough to let the deputy know that he needed to do what he needed to do, trust me,” Bradshaw said.
The trooper was not named by the Florida Highway Patrol.
Deputy Connor Haugh, 35, was hired by the sheriff ’s office in April 2016 after working nearly 11 years for Boynton Beach police. He is assigned to the Lake Worth district, and is on paid administrative leave, which is the department’s procedure after deputy shoots someone.
Video from a television news helicopter showed several cars with destroyed front ends and debris scattered across highway lanes. Firefighters had to cut Selva’s body out of his wrecked SUV, Bradshaw said.
The sheriff’s office will be investigating the Lake Worth fatal shooting and the incidents on Interstate 95. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement will investigate the fatal shooting by the deputy and the trooper’s use of the stun gun, Bradshaw said.
It’s unclear whether the chaos in Lantana was related to a pre-dawn incident Wednesday in Boca Raton, where a man was shot dead while driving south on I-95. “We don’t have evidence right now that the two (incidents) are related,” Boca Raton Police Officer Jessica Desir said late Thursday.
The sheriff’s office asks anyone with information about these crimes to call detectives at 561-688-3400 or Crime Stoppers of Palm Beach County, at 800-458-8477.