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Lyndon Blake (0:36)
We're at McDonald's on a Tuesday afternoon in Ybor City, Florida. Ybor is this historical pocket in downtown Tampa. It's known for its Cuban food, its cigars, and you see tourists walking through the streets. It's a warm, sunny day in Florida, the best kinds of days in the Sunshine State. This McDonald's smells like and looks like every other McDonald's. Honestly, you're in and out as quickly as the workers can make your combo. At this McDonald's, there's a slender and tall black man who's been working at the fast food place for four months now. He walks outside taking a break, but after seeing police, he quickly ducks back inside the McDonald's. This man is tall, he's skinny, but he's athletic. He looks like he could be a D1 basketball player, which is exactly what he was at St. John's University. This slender man goes up to his boss and McDonald's manager, Delanda Walker. He hands her a plastic McDonald's food bag and he tells her not to look inside and to keep it somewhere safe. He'll be right back. He's just cashing a check across the street before he goes out of state. No big deal. Then he walks outside of the McDonald's again. Delanda feels the bag is heavy and she feels something hard on the inside. So she takes it into the back room and opens up the bag and she sees a gun and wrapped in, of all things, napkins. Delanda walks back to the front of the fast food joint, scanning the crowd, when she sees a policewoman sitting at a table just eating her lunch. Delanda sees Officer Randy Whitney. She's grabbing a rare lunch at a place that's most convenient. She's eating quickly, eyes on her phone. She's reviewing a suspect video. Delanda immediately scurries over to Officer Randy, who not loud, not dramatic, but very, very urgent. She tells Randy there's a bag and there's a gun and a slender man who just walked out the door, all delanda can think about is a neighborhood just a few miles away over in Seminole Heights, brimming with unsolved murders. Did she find the killer? Can police catch him this time? Lyndon I'm Lyndon Blake and this is a Daily Wire True Crime Investigation. It's October 3, 2017. A young, tall and slender man walks into a large gun shop called Shooter's World on East Fletcher Avenue. The shop's about nine miles north of Tampa. And he made the drive to buy a pistol. He purchases a.40 caliber Glock and four days later on October 7th, he's able to pick up the weapon. After that man, mandatory waiting period that he has to go through. While he's there, he grabs a 20 round box of 40 caliber ammunition. All this legal activity, of course. The neighborhood of Seminole Heights sits just north of downtown Tampa. I'm going to paint the picture for what it's like. You have these old houses, but new restaurants, there's brew pubs, you have narrow streets and there's some lots that are overgrown. But it's a trendy, hip area. I lived in Tampa around this time and Seminole Heights had those cute Airbnbs. And a lot of times I would suggest my friends like, hey, when you're coming to town to stay in one of those in Seminole Heights. This is a neighborhood that you know is up and coming. But like most pockets on the rise, there are still some areas of crime, but we're talking mostly like car break ins, stuff like that. In Seminole Heights, people walk their dogs, they stroll their kids, they take the bus when they have to. They stand under streetlights that don't always work while they're waiting for an uber. It's Monday, October 9, 2017, and it's about 8:50pm 22 year old Benjamin Mitchell is at a bus stop on 15th street, roughly a block from his home. He's just waiting, listening to hip hop, waiting for the bus to come on so he can hop on and go see his girlfriend. While he's doing this, he's thinking about his dad and November 2nd, that's just 24 days away. November 2nd, that's an important date to Benjamin because it's the day his father is retiring, packing up his bags in Las Vegas and joining him in Tampa. Benjamin works during the day at Ikea. He works with his girlfriend actually. And at night he goes to classes at Hillsborough Community College. And, and he is very close to graduating with an associate's degree. Life is good, but Benjamin is still missing being around his father. They've Talked for years about reuniting and living together in Florida. And now they actually have a date to make it happen. Benjamin is obviously incredibly excited. So it's almost 9pm When a neighbor, Yahya Bey, hears four pops outside. first he thinks it's fireworks, but he still decides to go look out his front door. Yariel then sees Benjamin just lying on the ground at a bus stop across the street. He's still wearing his black headphones and there's blood pouring from his stomach. Yariel rushes to call 91 1. He stays there with Benjamin until police and paramedics arrive. Benjamin can't talk and when he does try to speak, his mouth just makes this, his hissing sound. Paramedics take him to the local hospital and unfortunately that's where Benjamin dies from those gunshot wounds. Police, they're able to quickly tape off the crime scene. They start knocking on doors in Seminole Heights. People are answering because remember, it's only 9pm it's nowhere close to the hour of the night where people are starting to think, oh, only bad things can happen now. So while neighbors talk to police, investigators are able to recover two.40 caliber casings. But detectives don't find an obvious motive as to why someone would want to take Benjamin's life. Houses in Seminole Heights. They're close together, so it's not long before police find a camera a nearby house that has some surveillance video. The footage shows a tall, slender person wearing a hooded shirt fiddling with his cell phone while walking eastbound towards 15th Street. That's about eight to 10 minutes before Benjamin is killed. This figure moves casually in this grainy camera recording. You see that he has no urgency, really in no hurry whatsoever. But he does have an unusual gait. This person has very long legs, noticeably long legs. So when they're walking it's like they're almost having to work harder to pick the legs up so it stand out on video. Minutes later, seconds after the murder, another clip from the same security system catches the same person running away. This time the person's going west after the shooting in the opposite direction. And this right now is big for the investigation. So police are able to release this grainy video to the public and they're able to call him a person of interest. Still, at this point, the shooting sounds like something homicide detectives deal with all the time. 32 year old Monica Hoffa is waiting tables at an IHOP about 15 minutes from her home in Seminole Heights. Monica also works another job on her days off from ihop. She's helping this new seafood restaurant open its doors. And she's doing everything. She's painting the walls, she's setting up the tables, and she plans to waitress there, too, after it opens. Monica's mom is deaf. So in between these jobs, Monica is heavily involved with the deaf community, helping any way she can. In the past, though, Monica's had her struggles. She was caught with four Xanax pills with no prescription earlier this year. And then last year, she left the scene of a car crash, and she lost her driver's license and was on probation. But she's finding her footing and she's working really hard. After finishing that long IHOP shift, Monica shares an Uber ride home with a co worker the coworker dropped off first. Then Monica makes a stop at a family dollar for just a few things on her way home. When she gets home, she puts those family dollar items away, and then she texts her friend that she's coming over. Her friend conveniently lives three blocks away in Seminole Heights. So Monica is able to walk there. She grabs her things, and that's when Monica leaves her house. It's Wednesday, October 11, and later that night, after Monica leaves her home at 8:47, you hear 911 calls coming in from Seminole Heights. Neighbors near North 11th street and East Orleans Avenue report hearing multiple gunshots, but responding officers don't find anything. Then two days later, on Friday morning, October 13th, the city landscape crew is about to mow an overgrown field when they stumble across Monica's body just lying there in the tall grass. She's near where those gunshots have been heard, and she's been shot once in her neck and twice in her back. And she lays dead only a half a mile from where Benjamin died just a few days before. At both of the crime scenes, investigators find several bullet shell casings. All are Sig Sauer, and they bear marks that indicate they've been fired from the same gun, a.40 caliber Glock.