A teenager accused of gunning down his 18-year-old friend in a West Boca Raton backyard three years ago is now headed to trial next month, after a judge rejected his claim that the shooting was self-defense. Dylan Dantas, who was 15 when he shot and killed Kaleb Cobourne in August 2023, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and possession of a firearm by a minor. He is now 18.
According to court documents cited by WPBF, Dantas's trial is scheduled to begin October 20 at 9:30 a.m. at the main Palm Beach County Courthouse in West Palm Beach. The case has been winding through the 15th Judicial Circuit since the night Cobourne was killed at Dantas's home on the 6800 block of Bianchini Circle, an unincorporated stretch of West Boca Raton that falls under the jurisdiction of the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office rather than municipal Boca Raton police, according to Boca Post.
Per the sheriff's office report, investigators allege Dantas shot and killed Cobourne following a disagreement between the two. Dantas has claimed the shooting was self-defense, and his defense team filed a motion to dismiss the case under Florida's self-defense immunity law, commonly known as Stand Your Ground. A judge denied that motion in February 2026, rejecting Dantas's bid to have the first-degree murder charge dismissed before trial and clearing the way for the case to proceed before a jury.
Surveillance Footage Contradicts Initial 911 Call
Dantas initially told a 911 dispatcher that he had shot an unknown intruder attempting to break into his home. But home surveillance footage obtained by investigators told a different story: it captured Dantas calling out, “Come to the backyard. Where you at?” moments before he opened fire, the same Boca Post report notes. That footage became a central piece of evidence undercutting the intruder narrative Dantas initially gave emergency dispatchers.
Crime scene technicians recovered nine spent bullet casings and an empty firearm at the Bianchini Circle home. Forensic extraction of cell phone data further revealed that Dantas had sent text and voice messages actively inviting Cobourne over before the shooting, according to the outlet's reporting. Responding Palm Beach County Fire Rescue personnel pronounced Cobourne dead from multiple gunshot wounds inside the home's screened pool enclosure, and sheriff's deputies confirmed Cobourne was unarmed when he was shot.
How a 15-Year-Old Ended Up Facing an Adult Murder Charge
Dantas faced an adult murder charge at 15. Florida leads the nation in funneling youth into adult court this way. Research from the ACLU of Florida found that more than 1,000 juveniles are prosecuted in adult criminal court in the state annually, with prosecutorial direct filings accounting for roughly 98 percent of all juvenile court transfers.
Dantas's defense invoked Florida's Stand Your Ground statute, Florida Statute § 776.032, in seeking to have the case dismissed before trial. In Dantas's case, the judge's February denial means that question is now settled and his fate rests with jurors set to hear the case starting next month.
The killing occurred against a backdrop of relatively steady violent crime rates in Palm Beach County. Data from FLHealthCHARTS shows the county recorded between 127.3 and 150.7 violent crimes per 100,000 residents annually from 2021 through 2024.
Hoodline first reported on the case in December 2023, when Dantas was arrested and formally named in the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office probable cause affidavit, in a piece headlined Boca Betrayal. With the trial date now confirmed for October 20 and the Stand Your Ground motion resolved, the case is set to move from pretrial motions into a full courtroom reckoning over what happened in that Bianchini Circle backyard three years ago.
