A 17-year-old Boynton Beach teen is facing adult murder charges after U.S. Marshals tracked him down nine days after a drive-by shooting killed 19-year-old Nigel Beckford on the 100 block of Northwest 8th Avenue. Sebastian Abdul Miller was arrested Monday and now faces first-degree murder with a firearm and discharging a firearm from a vehicle, capping an investigation that leaned heavily on license plate cameras and gunshot-detection technology to run down a car that fled the scene empty of witnesses willing to talk.
The shooting happened just before 5 p.m. on Saturday, August 8, in a residential stretch between a local church and the Ocean Breeze West neighborhood, according to WPTV. The location sat less than a 10-minute walk from both Beckford's residence and his mother's separate home, as the Palm Beach Post reported. Officers found Beckford suffering from multiple gunshot wounds after 911 dispatchers fielded several calls reporting a man had been shot, and the Boynton Beach Police Department's shot-detection system alerted officers to the gunfire almost simultaneously.
Off-Duty Officers Reached Him First
Off-duty officers working a detail at nearby Sara Sims Park responded within moments and reached Beckford while he was still conscious, allowing him to give investigators limited information before he was rushed to a hospital, per the same WPTV account. He later died from his injuries during emergency surgery, according to BocaNewsNow. Police say the suspect fired multiple rounds from a vehicle before fleeing, and an initial search of the area turned up no suspects.
Detectives first identified a suspect vehicle using automated license plate readers, tracing it to an office park on Quantum Lakes Drive, where police briefly told nearby residents and businesses to stay indoors during the August 8 search, BocaNewsNow reports. That vehicle turned out to be empty. Investigators then identified a second suspect vehicle through additional leads, which enabled SWAT-assisted search warrants and ultimately Miller's arrest with help from the Town of Lantana Police Department.
A Recent Arrest, and a Mother's Grief
Less than a month before he was killed, Beckford had been arrested in July on a felony criminal mischief charge for throwing a bottle through a glass window at his mother's home, bonding out of Palm Beach County jail on July 16 under a court-ordered no-contact order, the Palm Beach Post reported. Despite the recent legal dispute between them, his mother told reporters she was devastated by his death. Former educators at RISE Academy in West Palm Beach, an alternative academic program, remembered Beckford as a hard-working student “filled with light and laughter” who was enrolled in night school at the time of his death to finish his academic goals.
Adult Charges Under Florida's Direct-File Law
Because Miller is charged with first-degree murder, an enumerated capital felony, Florida law gives state attorneys discretionary authority to direct-file 16- and 17-year-olds straight into adult criminal court without a juvenile judge's waiver hearing, under Section 985.557 of the Florida Statutes, as outlined by Online Sunshine. Miller is currently being held at a juvenile assessment center as the case moves forward, and the investigation into the shooting continues.
The arrest leaned on Boynton Beach's integrated Real-Time Crime Center, which combines automated Flock Safety license plate readers with acoustic shot-detection sensors, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. That same technology has become central to the city's response to a string of youth gun violence cases. In July, Crime Stoppers of Palm Beach County raised its reward to $9,500 for information in the still-unsolved 2025 murder of 16-year-old Charles “C.J.” Morris Jr., another Boynton Beach teen killed by gunfire, as CBS 12 News reported.
Not every Boynton Beach murder case charged this year has ended in conviction. A Palm Beach County jury acquitted defendant Carl Jean-Francois of first-degree murder charges in July following a five-day trial stemming from a 2023 shooting, as Hoodline previously reported, underscoring the high burden of proof prosecutors face in the county's capital cases. For now, Miller's case remains in its early stages, with detectives continuing to investigate as the community mourns another teenager lost to gun violence in the same neighborhood where Sara Sims Park officers have responded to shootings before.
