In Miami Gardens, Florida last week, two enterprising young scholars decided a food delivery driver looked like easy money. Spoiler alert: They forgot that the driver had a vote in the matter. It didn’t go well for them.
The pair approached the driver and tried to rob him at gunpoint. The driver, who just wanted to deliver an order of banana pudding, apparently unimpressed with their career choice and professional skills, produced his own firearm and abruptly ended the negotiation.
One suspect, 20-year-old Demetrius Tromain Travis, took multiple rounds, including to the face, and was airlifted to the hospital where he later died.
His business partner, identified as 19-year-old Jabari Joshua Thomas, did what so many young street entrepreneurs do when their business plan goes sideways: he ran like a little bitch. Instead of sticking around to render aid to his downed partner, Thomas fled on foot toward a white vehicle, leaving him behind like used toilet paper. Witnesses described the fleeing suspect as tall and slim with distinctive dreads and orange slides. Subtle.
Miami Gardens police issued a BOLO. License plate readers and good old-fashioned police work did the rest.
Thomas didn’t make it far. He was located in nearby Miramar and taken into custody. He now faces charges of second-degree felony murder and armed robbery and is being held without bond. Felony murder is a special kind of gift that keeps on giving – kind of like herpes – when your robbery partner is shot dead during the crime you both signed up for.
The delivery driver stayed on scene, cooperated with police, and by all accounts acted in lawful self-defense. He went home. One robber in the morgue. The other in jail with a new, more easily managed haircut in his future, courtesy of the Broward County jail.
Once again, an armed citizen turned a potential robbery into a cautionary tale. The streets keep providing free education. But some scholars eschew education, instead preferring to learn the hard way in blood—or friendship bracelets.
NBC Miami has more:
Jabari Joshua Thomas, 19, is facing charges of second-degree felony murder and armed robbery in the Aug. 6 incident.
According to an arrest warrant, a food delivery man was dropping off an order of banana pudding in the 20300 block of Northwest 34th Court when Thomas and another man, 20-year-old Demetrius Tromain Travis, tried to rob him.
Thomas got into the backseat of the victim’s car and at one point, allegedly put a gun to the driver’s head, the warrant said.
The suspect(s) were also trying to access the driver’s CashApp when the driver pulled out his own gun and opened fire, the warrant said.