On the night of August 10, 2025, Berkens Obas, 47, a man from the Boynton Beach area, was shot outside the Ashley Lake Park/Ashley Lake Apartments on Ashley Lake Drive. Deputies with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office arrived just before midnight to find Berkens Obas unresponsive in front of an apartment building, while two women—identified as Myolie Filogene and Debora Filogene—were wounded and rushed to Delray Medical Center.
The gathering had been winding down, and witnesses later told investigators they were outside taking photos when a neighbor confronted them about the noise. Moments later, shots broke the warm August night, and Berkens Obas fell where he stood.
Detectives traced the shots to Robert Lee Gipson, who, according to the arrest report and recorded 911 calls, phoned dispatchers and said he feared he was “about to get jumped,” adding in one call, “I shot one, I killed him.” Witnesses contradicted his account, telling deputies there had been no physical fight—only a brief exchange of words—before gunfire. The scene, lit by the flashing lights of arriving cruisers, resolved into a homicide investigation that would hinge on those minutes of tension and the words captured on tape.
In the days that followed, the Sheriff’s Office named Gipson as the suspect. On September 2, 2025, he surrendered to the Palm Beach County Jail. Prosecutors charged him with first-degree murder, two counts of aggravated battery with a firearm, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. A judge later ordered him held without bond. For the Filogene sisters, investigators said their wounds were not life-threatening; for Berkens Obas, the outcome was final, his name added to the city’s roll of lives lost to gunfire.
News accounts describe a dispute over noise as the spark—a complaint from a neighbor that a small gathering outside was too loud—followed by gunfire that ended one life and altered others. The apartment complex parking lot, so ordinary by day, became the center of a case that now moves through court with Gipson facing the gravest charge. In the aftermath, loved ones remembered Berkens Obas as a devoted husband and father, a man whose final moments unfolded in front of his family.
