Page 2 - Florida Sentinel 6-5-18

Feature
Doctor To Testify In Seminole Heights Murder Case
BY IRIS B. HOLTON Sentinel City Editor
Late Thursday, the attorneys representing Howell Emanuel Donaldson, III, were granted their wish to have Dr. Richard A. Carpenter, Ph.D., to testify per- taining to the mental state of his client.
A court-approved psychologist, Dr. Carpenter was approved to evaluate Donaldson last month. Cicuit Judge Mark Wolfe set the hearing to determine if Donald- son is mentally competent to stand trial for June 29th.
If it is determined that Don- aldson is not competent, he will be sent to a mental hospital until he is ruled competent to stand trial.
Dr. Carpenter submitted his report to the courts on May 3rd. Donaldson is being represented by Assistant Public Defender Charles J. Traina.
Donaldson, 25, is accused of committing four random murders
last year between October 9th and November 14th in Seminole Heights. Donaldson was arrested on November 28, 2017.
The arrest came about after Donaldson walked into the Mc- Donald’s Restaurant near Ybor City and gave a bag containing a handgun to his manager, Ms. De- Landa Walker. She alerted po- lice after the bag was opened and she realized it contained a gun.
Police determined through forensic testing that the gun was the murder weapon in all four cases. Donaldson took posses- sion of the weapon on October 7th, two days before the first murder.
All of the victims were walking in the Seminole Heights neighbor- hoods when they were shot. Shell casings found at the scenes linked the murders.
On October 9th, Benjamin Mitchell, 22, was shot 4 times near N. 15th Street and E. Frierson Avenue. A video at a business cap- tured the image of the hooded cul- prit. Mitchell was shot at 9 p.m.,
HOWELL EMANUEL DONALDSON, III
and died at a local hospital.
The body of Ms. Monica Hoffa was discovered on the morning of Friday, October 13th, by a city worker in the 1000 block of E. New Orleans Avenue. She was last seen walking near 11th Street and New Orleans going to meet a friend. She had been shot 3 times. Police believe she died around 9 p.m., on October 11th. Officers had responded to the area in reference
to shots being fired.
The murder of Anthony Nai-
boa, 20, took place on October 19th, shortly before 8 p.m. Naiboa, a young adult with Autism, had gotten off the bus at the wrong stop. He was walking north on 15th Street in the area of Wilder Avenue when he was killed.
Although the area was blan- keted with police officers who heard the gunshots, the suspect slipped through their grasp. The first three victims were killed in the evening hours.
The next murder took place in the early morning hours of No- vember 14th, at 4:40 a.m. Ronald Felton, 60, was crossing the street in the 1500 block of N. Nebraska Avenue, at approximately 4:40 a.m., when he fell victim to the gunman.
In January of this year, State
Attorney Andrew Warren
stated that he plans to seek the death penalty in the murder case. Prior to his arrest, Donaldson had no prior police records.
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