Body cam video of deputy shooting man in Sam's Club parking lot

Deputies fired around six shots with at least three striking a man law enforcement officials said was involved in “a pretty gruesome homicide” at a Sanford Islamic center during a traffic stop in the Sam’s Club parking lot Thursday.

Law enforcement officers were notified the man's vehicle, a blue Chrysler Town & Country van, had entered the county around 12:30 p.m. and was last picked up by electronic license plate readers at 58th Avenue and State Road 60, said Sheriff Eric Flowers.

The entire interaction between the deputies and the man he said took “less than a minute.”

“They conducted a felony-style traffic stop knowing that this vehicle was involved in a suspicious death in Seminole County,” said Flowers. “The suspect ... got out of the vehicle speaking a foreign language.”

The van belonged to a man killed at the Husseini Islamic Center in Seminole County, and the man driving it was wanted by the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office as the suspected killer in the death investigation, he said.

Neither Flowers, nor Seminole County officials released any names of those involved in the incidents, including the names of the deputies involved.

What happened in Seminole County
Earlier Thursday, the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office reported the investigation of a “suspicious death” at the Husseni Islamic Center about 115 miles away from Vero Beach in unincorporated Sanford.

During a news conference there, Seminole County Sheriff Dennis Lemma said a woman arrived at the center and saw what looked to be a pair of trousers at the front door, and inside saw there appeared to have been some sort of altercation with chairs and a table moved. A propane tank appeared to have been thrown through a window.

She saw a body on the back porch and called 911.

About 8:45 a.m., Seminole County sheriff’s officials found a 59-year-old dead man, a maintenance worker at the facility who was an Iraqi immigrant, Lemma said.

“He had just recently received notification that his father had passed away in Iraq,” Lemma said. “He was planning to go back home and he was in the process of training his replacement for the past couple of weeks.”

Lemma said there had been some conflict between the two, but there didn’t appear to be anything violent.

He said the suspect is thought to have been born in Egypt and spent most of his life in the United States.

“The victim and the suspect were known to one another,” Lemma said. “This is not a situation of a random act that somebody wanted to target a mosque.”

He said investigators found blood dripped throughout the area, and a shovel that had blood on it.

"It is very likely that the weapon of choice to commit this homicide was the shovel,” Lemma said. “We won't know that until we fully forensically examine the scene and look at it but it looks like the altercation started, that our suspect grabbed the shovel and used the shovel, blunt force trauma to the body.”

He said it appears the assailant pulled the deceased outside and hosed down the body, perhaps clearing evidence. The deceased was wearing only undergarments.

Investigators ultimately learned the accused killer was driving the victim’s vehicle, a 2006 Chrylser Town & Country van.

Seminole County officials put out a “be on the lookout” notification regarding the vehicle.

“We had the license plate because we knew it was the victim's vehicle,” Lemma said. “We entered that into our technology systems and ultimately received an alert on that license plate in Indian River County.”

Body camera footage released by the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office shows deputies as they surrounded the vehicle in the parking lot yelling commands as the man approached them with his hands in the air.

He then appears to speak to deputies in a language other than English and reaches behind his back, bringing his hands out in what looks like the shape of a gun as deputies scream, “Don’t do that.”

“He then reached into his pocket and came out like he had a gun with finger guns,” said Flowers. “If it was me, I would have pulled the trigger — our guys did not.”

After the man appeared to attempt to reach back inside the van, deputies opened fire about six times with three shots striking him in the abdomen and chest area, Flowers said.

“He definitely wanted them to shoot him,” said Flowers, when asked during a news conference if it was a case of “suicide by cop.”

Both deputies, one described as a veteran and the other with upwards of eight years at the agency, are on paid administrative leave, which Flowers said is standard procedure following a shooting by deputies.
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