Background: Fountain Place Apartments in Bartow, Florida (Google Maps). Insets (from left to right): Jeffrey Blevins and David Morris (Polk County Sheriff”s Office).
In central Florida, a tragic incident unfolded when a man was fatally shot while chatting with his mother over the phone. Jeffrey Blevins, 56, was enjoying a cigarette outside his apartment when his life was abruptly ended by a bullet allegedly fired by his neighbor from upstairs, as reported by authorities.
The suspect, 48-year-old David Richard Morris, is currently facing charges of second-degree murder without premeditation, along with discharging a firearm in a residential area. According to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, Morris appeared in court for the first time on Sunday, where he was denied bond and remains in custody.
On Thursday night, Blevins was outside of his first-floor residence at Fountain Place Apartments in Bartow, Florida, where he lived with his sister, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said during a Monday press conference. Blevins was smoking a cigarette and speaking to his mother on the phone.
During the phone call with his mother, she reportedly heard a noise that sounded like a fall. Concerned, she called out to Blevins but received no answer. Alarmed, she contacted Blevins’ sister, instructing her to “go outside and find your brother. He’s fallen down or something’s happened to him. He won’t talk to me.”
The Bartow Police Department was alerted around 11:20 p.m. about an individual who was down. Upon arrival, officers discovered Blevins’ lifeless body near the fitness center of his apartment complex. It was evident that he had met a violent end, having been shot in the forehead, and appeared to have died instantly.
As the investigation unfolded, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office delved into the case, uncovering that Blevins was regarded as a “non-confrontational” and “well-liked” individual by those who knew him. Interviews with neighbors soon directed investigators to Morris, who now stands accused of this senseless act.
Authorities — including the Polk County Sheriff’s Office — began investigating and learned that Blevins was known as being “non-confrontational” and “well-liked.” Investigators spoke with the victim’s neighbors, leading them to Morris’ door.
“He has been described to us as a conspiracy theorist,” Judd said of Morris, noting the suspect has lived with his mother his whole life. “He’s what we call a flat Earther. He still doesn’t believe the Earth is round. Well, the floor in the county jail is flat, anyway, and that’s where he is.”
“So we first interviewed him, and we asked him … ‘do you own a firearm?’ He says, ‘Yes, I own a nine millimeter handgun,’” Judd recounted. “Little did he know … is we had a nine millimeter casing from where our victim had been shot.”
Detectives continued to investigate, and they spoke with someone else who reportedly described Morris as a “suspicious guy that, when he was high on meth, would brag about his gun.” The sheriff described how investigators found a person possessing meth who told them they had given the drug to Morris in the past.
“Then we found another person who admitted to us, ‘well, this guy is, he’s kind of an irritating guy. Doesn’t cause a lot of problem, but he’s just, he’s just really strange,’” Judd added. Officers obtained a search warrant for Morris’ home and when they searched it, they found a gun with “the same exact casing, brand, and stamp as the murder casing.”
“David didn’t do a real good job cleaning the gun because we found evidence, blood evidence on the gun,” he continued. “And then we were real excited when we found that there was blood evidence on some shoes he had in his house, as well as a towel.”
“During the search, Morris refused to remain seated and interfered with detectives by yelling at them,” the sheriff’s office added, saying they arrested Morris at the time and booked him in the Polk County Jail on a charge of resisting. They also charged him with interfering with a traffic control device because “detectives recovered two street signs that Morris illegally possessed.”
Investigators learned that Morris “had been aggressive toward other tenants,” with one resident saying Morris had a confrontation with Blevins on the night before he was killed.
Bartow, Florida, is located about 45 miles east of Tampa, Florida.
