Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Man charged after bodies found on beach
Suspect faces two counts of murder after leading police on chase
The man who led cops on a dramatic I-95 chase earlier this month now faces two counts of murder in the deaths of two men whose bodies were found on Fort Lauderdale beach, police said Monday.
Daniel Dovi, 64, of Pennsylvania, has been charged with two counts of premeditated murder.
The bodies of two homeless men, Walter Amryan III, 59, and Adan Gonsulez, 37, were found bloodied at the beachside Earl Lifshey Park on June 9, and at least one appeared to a 911 caller as missing an arm, according to records.
About a mile away, Dovi got into a violence argument with a property owner who told him to leave his private property, a grassy field, police said. That led Dovi to drive off in a Jeep, which led to a televised police chase on Interstate
95. A Highway Patrol trooper forced the Jeep that Dovi was driving to flip on its side and they arrested him.
From the beginning, authorities called Dovi as a person of interest: Officers found “multipleedged weapons and clothes that appear to be freshly washed inside of his vehicle,” Detective Ali Adamson said at a news conference.
Investigators relied on forensic evidence to link Dovi to the killings, police said Monday, without describing what evidence was analyzed. An arrest report detailing the murder charges wasn’t available, and the Public Defender’s Office, which is representing Dovi, said Monday it couldn’t comment.
Dovi was described in court as a man with a history of mental health issues and past run-ins with police including criminal trespass out of Maine in 1992, resisting arrest out of Texas in 2002, assault causing bodily injury out of Texas in 1997 and unlawfully carrying a weapon out of Texas in 1997.
Records show Dovi was also arrested in 1998 in Texas on a charge of animal cruelty.
And this was not Dovi’s first run-in with the law in Fort Lauderdale. Records show he was arrested in 2006 on the charge of loitering and prowling, but the city ultimately decided not to prosecute.
He had been accused of looking into cars at a parking garage, and police confiscated several electronics that he said he had found. Dovi at the time had been in Broward for only five weeks and was unemployed, according to paperwork.