Police: Killing of man justified under Fla. law
RIVIERA BEACH — City police have closed their investigation of a previously unreported homicide from September, calling it justifiable under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law.
Edward Peter Hatten, 57, died Sept. 30 after he exchanged blows with another man early in the month and was found on the pavement outside a convenience store. Riviera Beach police released their report Thursday, four months after The Palm Beach Post filed a records request for it.
According to the report, witnesses said Hatten got in a dispute over drugs and that they saw him repeatedly hit another man, who punched back once. Hatten fell to the concrete pavement and hit his head.
A police officer found Hatten unconscious and lying on his back at the scene outside the Touch Down Food Mart, on the 2500 block of President Barack Obama Highway near Blue Heron Boulevard, and called for firefighters. They rushed Hatten to St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach.
There, Hatten was diagnosed with bleeding on the right side of his brain and swelling around his left eye, and he was unable to move the right side of his body. He was listed in critical condition with deep bleeding on one side of the brain and spotting throughout the brain.
Hatten was put in hospice care on Sept. 19, and died on Sept. 30.
Police had an image of the second man from the store, at Obama Highway and West 25th Street, where he used the ATM. That photo was distributed countywide in an effort to identify him.
Later in the Palm Beach County Jail, police found a witness who’d been with the second man. The witness said Hatten was waiting on the second man to come out of the convenience store because Hatten said the second man owed him money. When the second man came out of the store, Hatten punched him several times, took beer out of his hand and punched him again. The second man hit back once. Hatten fell.
Police said they tried to identify the second man using limited information from the ATM but never succeeded. He was described in the police report only as a white male, whom witnesses said lived either in nearby Lake Park or somewhere north, possibly Port St. Lucie.