ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – A neighbor who called 911 and led deputies to a home where three women and a 4-year-old girl were killed recalled what happened early Friday.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Office said the four people were found shot and killed inside a home on Myers Drive around 4 a.m. after another woman, who had also been shot, ran to a neighbor’s home for help.
[TRENDING: What is a subtropical storm? | Lunar eclipse coming soon | Become a News 6 Insider]
That neighbor, Johnny Ramirez, said he opened his door to find his neighbor injured.
“I heard somebody banging on the door,” Ramirez said. “I went to the door and opened it and my neighbor was there with her face full of blood.”
Ramirez said he tried to help as best as he could. While calling 911, he learned what happened.
“She started screaming that, ‘He shot everyone! He shot everyone!’”
Detectives identified the suspect as 23-year-old Shavell Jordan Jones. They found him at the scene, alive, with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Sheriff John Mina told reporters Friday one of the women who was killed was in a relationship with Jones.
“Overnight they got into an argument. At some point, Jones began to remove his belongings from the home, and then re-entered the home and began shooting,” Mina said.
Mina said Jones murdered the 49-year-old matriarch of the family, two of her daughters ages 28 and 29, and her 4-year-old granddaughter. Jones shot another of the matriarch’s daughters, a woman in her 20s, who sought help at the neighbor’s house.
“I never had any problems with any of them,” Ramirez said. “They are really nice people, you know, they keep to themselves. They are very courteous. It was a surprise, a bad surprise.”
Ramirez said he would see the family often when they would pass by his house to get to Dean Road. He said he is still shocked by what happened.
“I’m a father of four kids, and I’m the grandfather of a little girl,” Ramirez said. “There are no words.”
The sheriff’s office said two other children, 4 and 6 years old, hid under blankets when the shooting started. Deputies found them uninjured at the house.
Ramirez hopes for justice and help for the woman her two young children.
“She just lost her mom, two sisters, and one of her daughters,” said Ramirez. “She’s going to need help psychologically, economically. She’s going to need all the help she can get.”
Mina said deputies have not responded to any calls for service at the home before regarding the family or suspect in this case. They also found no reported history of domestic violence.
Detectives did look into Jones’s background and found he failed to appear on a misdemeanor charge a few years ago.
A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office told News 6 on Monday they secured and executed five arrest warrants for Jones, four for first-degree murder and one for attempted first-degree murder. He remains in the hospital.
Get today’s headlines in minutes with Your Florida Daily: