A man who had been barred from a DeLand property was shot dead late Tuesday night after the property's resident found him asleep inside the home's laundry room, according to the Volusia Sheriff's Office. The shooting happened at 127 N. Boulevard Court off Woodland Avenue, in an unincorporated pocket near DeLand's city limits, following a 911 call placed at 10:47 p.m. on September 1.
The caller told deputies he had shot a trespasser on his property, and he met arriving deputies with his hands up, per the sheriff's office. Investigators say the shooter lived in a camper on the property, while the man who died had lived there on and off in the past but had since been barred from staying at the property, according to the Orlando Sentinel. The dispute began after the shooter discovered the man asleep in the laundry room of the main home, per the Volusia Sheriff's Office.
An argument between the two men followed, and the shooter told deputies he warned the man he would be shot if he did not back away. The man advanced on him despite those warnings, the shooter claimed, and the shooter fired several rounds. The man died at the scene and was found lying in the driveway, per the sheriff's office; he had not yet been publicly identified by authorities as of the newspaper's report. The Volusia Sheriff's Office said the shooting remains under investigation.
Dispatch Logged It as a Priority Call in West Volusia
Official dispatch records list the call, number 262442253, as a priority-1 shooting with injuries entered at 10:47 p.m. and assigned to law enforcement zone 23B, according to the Volusia Sheriff's Office. The joint emergency response drew both the sheriff's office and the DeLand Police Department, since 127 N. Boulevard Court sits just outside the city's boundaries in an area that falls under the sheriff's District 2 and Major Case Unit for investigative purposes rather than city police.
What Florida's Self-Defense and Trespass Laws Say
The case turns on a legal distinction between removing a trespasser and justifying a fatal shooting. Florida Statute § 810.09 makes remaining on property after being told to leave a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail, a warning that can be delivered verbally or through posted notice. But simply being a trespasser does not, on its own, legally justify deadly force.
Florida Statute § 776.031 allows a property possessor to use non-deadly force to end a trespass, reserving deadly force for situations where a person reasonably believes it is necessary to prevent imminent death, great bodily harm, or a forcible felony. Separately, Florida Statute § 776.013 gives a resident inside a dwelling no duty to retreat and a statutory presumption of reasonable fear when confronting someone who unlawfully and forcibly enters — a standard that has applied since the state eliminated the duty to retreat inside a home in 2005. Because the shooter says the man advanced on him after being warned, detectives and prosecutors must now weigh whether that confrontation cleared the legal bar for deadly force.
Part of a Violent Summer Stretch in West Volusia
The shooting adds to a string of violent incidents the Volusia Sheriff's Office has investigated around DeLand this summer. On August 13, Major Case detectives opened a homicide probe after a man was fatally stabbed on West Beresford Avenue near State Road 15A, a case that closed roads while detectives searched for evidence. A day earlier, a contracted garbage truck driver was shot during a dispute that escalated into violence in DeLand's Trinity Gardens neighborhood, as Hoodline previously reported.
In May, a Volusia Sheriff's deputy fatally shot a fleeing driver in a DeLand Walmart parking lot off South Woodland Boulevard after a reckless driving chase through downtown DeLand. Hoodline also covered a separate August case in which a DeLand man was indicted for murder following a break-in and strangling. The sheriff's office has not released the identity of the man killed in Tuesday night's shooting, and the investigation into what happened at 127 N. Boulevard Court remains open.
