Man is charged with murder in the 2019 shootings of teenagers in the park

WEST PALM BEACH — More than five years after a shooting that killed two teenagers at a West Palm Beach-area park, authorities have arrested a 27-year-old man in connection with the crime.

Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputies booked Jabari Scott into jail on Monday, Oct. 7, to face charges in the Jan. 13, 2019, lake killings of 17-year-old Moltere Charles Jr. and 16-year-old Frederick Rosemond are responsible for Belvedere Estates Park.

A grand jury formally indicted Scott in June on two counts of first-degree murder with a firearm in the Lake Belvedere Estates Park shooting. He also faces five additional counts of attempted second-degree murder.

Under orders from District Judge Scott Suskauer, who will preside over Scott’s trial, state officials transferred Scott from the custody of the Florida Department of Corrections, where he is serving a 10-year sentence at Lancaster Correctional Institution in a separate attempted murder case.

During a hearing on Tuesday, Oct. 8, District Judge Donald Hafele assigned Scott a public defender and ordered him held without bail. The county public defender’s office generally does not comment on open cases.

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The defendant is connected to various shootings, investigators say

Sheriff’s investigators said Charles and Rosemond were shot while they and a group of friends were hanging out and listening to music at the park on Caroline Avenue at Haverhill Road. A third person was also shot but survived.

Family members of Charles and Rosemond told the Palm Beach Post that the teens were coming from a 16-year-old’s birthday party at a banquet hall about two miles east.

According to a sheriff’s arrest report, the teens and a group of friends were standing nearby or resting in vehicles on the north side of the park when at least one person approached and began shooting at them indiscriminately.

Investigators obtained surveillance video from a neighboring residence that showed one person with a handgun and another with a rifle. The sheriff’s firearms laboratory determined that the shell casings and projectiles recovered from the murder matched shell casings recovered nearby in separate shootings in December.

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Through ballistics analysis and surveillance footage, investigators identified Scott as a suspect in the December 2018 shootings. After he was taken into custody for a probation violation, he admitted to being involved in the December shootings but denied any involvement the Lake Belvedere Estates murders, the arrest report states.

He told investigators he was near Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard, more than two miles away, when the murders occurred.

According to the arrest report, investigators obtained a recording of a phone conversation Scott had with a friend shortly after his interview with investigators. Scott described being questioned about the double murder and instructed his friend to go to Scott’s house, retrieve clothes Scott was wearing on the night in question and burn them, the report said.

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He also instructed his friend to delete social media posts of his, particularly those that showed clothing he was wearing at the time of the murders. Investigators determined that the information Scott disseminated during the recorded phone calls did not match the information he provided to investigators.

A review of cellphone records revealed that one of Scott’s mobile devices was in the area of ​​the crime scene that night, investigators said. They also determined that Scott used his mobile device to research how to alter or tamper with evidence related to an AK-47 Draco pistol. Forensic analysts linked some of the shell casings to that type of pistol, and investigators found evidence that Scott owned one in the days surrounding the shooting.

Julius Whigham II is a criminal justice and public safety reporter at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at [email protected] and follow him on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter @JuliusWhigham. Support our work: Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared in the Palm Beach Post: Murder charges filed in shooting of teens in West Palm Beach Park