Fatal beating suspect had 4 stints in prison
Savage attack at Stein Mart unprovoked, says Gardens police chief.
PALM BEACH GARDENS — Three weeks after 77-year-old Bernard Leonard Fairman was brutally attacked and killed in a Palm Beach Gardens parking lot, police have arrested his alleged attacker.
Authorities picked up 50-yearold Danny Michael Harrigan on Tuesday in Riviera Beach on first-degree murder, robbery and aggravated battery charges in the attack about 8 p.m. Sept. 11 in the Shoppes of Oakbrook plaza parking lot off U.S. 1.
Harrigan refused to appear Wednesday morning before Judge Dina Keever-Agrama on the charges stemming from that case and was ordered to remain in the county jail without the possibility of posting bond.
Court records indicate the Riviera Beach man was out on bond at the time of the attack. In that unrelated burglary case, Harrigan is alleged to have stolen more than $1,000 worth of fishing supplies in August from a Riviera Beach store.
State records show Harrigan has had four stints in prison since the late 1980s, mainly for fraud-, burglaryand drug-related offenses. He was last released from state custody in 2015. The state attorney’s office said Wednesday that Harrigan has been convicted of felony offenses 27 times.
Harrigan is accused of savagely beating Fairman to death in what Palm Beach Gardens Police Chief
Clinton Shannon called a totally unprovoked and random attack on the man as he got into his car after leaving Stein Mart, a clothing store. Shannon said Harrigan appeared to try to rob Fairman.
He broke Fairman’s nose and jaw and damaged his eye socket, Shannon said in a news conference Wednesday morning. Fairman hit his head on the pavement during the struggle and lost consciousness. He died Sept. 17.
A man and a woman, both of whom are older than 65, walked out of Stein Mart that evening and saw Harrigan and Fairman struggling in the front seat of a blue pick-up parked near the handicap spaces. The woman asked the men if they needed help.
Harrigan dropped Fairman onto the ground head first, the woman told investigators, and screamed for the woman to give him her purse. He grabbed it, breaking her finger in the process, and punched her husband when he tried to step in.
Then Harrigan ran, witnesses said.
A teenager getting off a shift at Jersey Mike’s Subs drove by the fleeing Harrigan. He honked his horn and yelled for Harrigan to stop. Another person in the parking lot said he was able to wrestle the stolen purse from Harrigan, but couldn’t keep him from fleeing.
Harrigan ran barefoot out of the plaza. He’d left his sandals near Fairman’s truck. Investigators took DNA swabs from the shoes as well as from the vape Harrigan appeared to have left behind in Fairman’s truck.
On Monday, lab results matched the DNA found at the scene to Harrigan’s. Investigators had access to his DNA because, as a felon, his DNA is on file.
“This was a brutal attack of an elderly man,” Shannon said. “Totally unprovoked.”
The people who stepped in to help Fairman have declined to speak with the media.
Police credited “many” tips and physical evidence at the scene for leading them to Harrigan.
Records show that police obtained a warrant to search Fairman’s blue, four-door Toyota Tacoma on Sept. 14.
Along with taking DNA swabs, sunglasses, a Quality Inn hotel key card, a Stein Mart bag with socks, a Dasani water bottle, a fishing hat, two jackets and a sweatshirt were added to evidence in the case.
Investigators announced shortly after the attack that they wanted to speak with a white man in his mid-tolate 20s who was between 5 feet 10 inches and 6 feet tall.
Surveillance footage from the Publix Super Market at the south end of the shopping center just north of PGA Boulevard showed a man wearing a distinct T-shirt with the word “OUR” on the back, police said. The man also had a large tattoo on the outside of his left calf, though they didn’t comment on the specifics of that tattoo.
Police confirmed Wednesday the man is Harrigan.
According to an obituary that appeared in The Palm Beach Post, a funeral mass was conducted last weekend at St. Clare Catholic Church in North Palm Beach.
Fairman’s family has declined to speak to reporters.