On May 18, 2010, 21-year-old African-American male Derek Anderson was fatally shot outside his mother’s apartment in Tampa, Florida. At approximately 11:20 p.m., Derek was returning home with his friend Joe Anderson when they noticed a white car trailing them. As they reached the entrance of Derek’s apartment complex, the car passed slowly, and Joe observed four males inside, all staring at them. After parting ways, Joe called Derek’s mother’s cell phone to check on him.
Derek answered but the call abruptly ended in static. When Joe called back, someone else answered, and he heard screams and raised voices. Joe rushed to Derek’s apartment and found police and neighbors gathered around Derek’s body near the front door.
Officer John Simpkins arrived at the scene at 11:32 p.m. and found Derek unresponsive with a bloodstain on his shirt. CPR was administered, and Derek was transported to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 12:33 a.m. An autopsy revealed that Derek had been shot once in the back, with the bullet perforating his heart, aorta, esophagus, and lungs, leading to rapid death. The bullet was later matched to a firearm used by Dontae Morris in a subsequent shooting.
Witnesses reported seeing four Black males fleeing the scene in a white car. Ashley Price, a friend of Dontae Morris, testified that Morris confessed to killing Derek after an earlier argument over drug territory. Morris claimed that Derek had been selling marijuana on what he considered his turf, leading to a confrontation that escalated to murder. Cell phone records placed Morris near the crime scene at the time of the shooting.
Dontae Morris was arrested and charged with first-degree premeditated murder. In 2015, a jury recommended the death penalty by a 10-2 vote. However, following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling requiring unanimous jury recommendations for death sentences, Morris was resentenced to life in prison in 2021 for Derek's murder. He remains on death row for the separate killings of two Tampa police officers, Jeffrey Kocab and David Curtis, which occurred in June 2010.
