Motorcycle gang shootout closes I-4 overnight: Sheriff Judd press conference

on this friday i want to take you back in time i want to take you back to the 1880s do you remember watching the old westerns where the outlaws were chasing each other through the countryside and shooting at each other well let's advance to 2021 the same thing happened last night except the outlaws instead of being on horses we're on motorcycles i guess you could call them iron horses what i'm about to tell you is just a messed up situation by a bunch of messed up people the information i give you is preliminary and the reason i give you this disclaimer is nobody's telling us the truth i know that's a news flash but it's not working in their best interest but we've cobbled together some information i'm about to give to you we apologize that we had to have the interstate shut down for a protracted period of time however we had bullet casings from three different firearms scattered over a half mile and here's what occurred just after midnight ronald donovan who's 38 years of age in a black male is a member of the sin city disciples motorcycle gang he and at least two other motorcycles were eastbound through on interstate 4 through the county headed toward the orlando area when along came two thug riders a different game on at least two motorcycles and passed them well apparently that didn't work so well and so then there was some skirmishing and some driving about a hundred miles an hour and during this event ronald shot from his motorcycle he shot one of the thug riders who is what we were called victim one who's 36 years of age and a hispanic male victim one says i felt the sharp pain in the back as i was shot and i immediately returned fire toward ronald donovan who had a white female as his partner on the back of his motorcycle he struck the white female in the head and she's dead i mean i'm sorry she's going to die she is not dead yet but she is mortally wounded according to the information that we received from the hospital it is a through and through wound from just above the ear and comes out the other side so now we have two victims that are shot she falls off of the motorcycle and ronald stops ronald and she have been friends as we're told for about eight or nine years at this time victim one drives to champions gate which is the next large intersection past i-4 and 27 stops at a papa john's dallas 9-1-1 and said i got shot on the interstate in the meantime we're receiving other 911 calls that there's a shooting down on the interstate and obviously it's the same we send deputies to both locations the florida highway patrol assist us and we determine immediately that this is not a crash that's caused this fatality or soon to be fatality i keep calling it a fatality because they tell us she is she is in super super critical condition at this moment we start the investigation we find out that there's a really a driving riding gun battle down interstate 4 just after midnight last night we have witnesses that said they were wearing gain colors but by the time we arrived they were not only not wearing their gang colors their game colors weren't there ronald had two empty gun holsters when he was taken into custody but there were no firearms around just as deputies were arriving they saw a motorcycle leave the scene and we suspect the person on that motorcycle may have the gain colors and or the firearms so we had to search for evidence and firearms all up and down the interstate there's a half mile trail of empty casings where this gun fight took place at this moment in time and i'm cautious at this moment in time it appears to me that victim one who was shot in the back back was acting in self-defense when he returned fire toward ronald donovan striking victim two who's a 33 year old female ronald donovan now keep in mind has his friend his girlfriend shot off the back of his motorcycle when we are trying to determine what happened from him he says i know my rights i don't have to talk to you i take the fifth dude your girlfriend is just shot off the back of your motorcycle is an extremely critical condition and you won't cooperate to tell us what happened i know my rights well he needs his rights because we ended up arresting him at the scene for battery on a law enforcement officer resisting arrest we're also going to charge him with attempted second-degree felony murder on his girlfriend if she dies that will change to felony murder because all evidence all indication at this moment the investigation indicates he started the shooting he's also been charged with attempted first degree murder for shooting the other victim the other victim had an independent witness had an independent gang witness we separated them immediately they told us virtually the same exact story and we didn't give them the opportunity to collaborate on their stories once we arrived this is a significant event so now we can expect the sin city disciples and it's spelled d-e-c-i-p-l-e-s they spelled it wrong intentionally and the thug writers to get all dusted up and be mean-mouthing each other on social media and let me warn you retaliation will get you all locked up in prison for a very long time and that's a guarantee in polk county i don't recommend you do it in any county but stay out of polk county your stupidness has already gotten a 33 year old beautiful young lady in a near-death situation and another man shot an old ronald who started the shooting locked up in prison or jail on his way to prison for what a man amounts to lifetime felonies now i'll be glad to entertain questions because i do that sort of thing however i've literally told you everything that we're comfortable with at this point in time we've had a lot of lying going on we've had people that don't talk we've had evidence hidden we've had wit we've had at least witnesses and possible co-defendants that that fled on us and we'll find you too just give us the time we got to get this sorted out but we're coming to you to talk to you so we are as you know very early into this investigation any questions was there a specific beef between these two guys just the fact that they're part of a rival gang yeah that's a very interesting question the information we have at this time they came both came from tampa one came from a restaurant and one came from a restaurant and apparently a gang house they they did not have a rivalry going on they weren't at the same place earlier in the evening so it just happened that the thug riders decided they would pass the sin city riders and that didn't work so well you had a rush of testosterone and a rush of idiocy and it ended up with death near death i keep saying death i shouldn't she is not deceased yet but she is in horribly bad condition okay anything else we do have some civilian witnesses that that obviously we're not talking about right now that were behind the motorcycles when this event occurred so there are some independent witnesses sure the good news is that there's no one at large there's not a random shooter out here we we we may not have all the shooters but we're comf comfortable that we've got the groups together and it's not like there's going to be someone out there tonight randomly shooting at cars so it was great work by our deputies and detectives highway patrol who assisted us but understand the one guy that was shot in the back he raced to a phone to call us and the other guy who his girlfriend is near death he knows his rights and we're going dude we're just trying to find out what happened here we're not accusing anybody this was when we first got there i know my rights okay see how that works for you passing through the interstate four goes from coastline to coastline so they they were just passing through on their way back to the orlando area i mean i know you've seen a lot but hearing this it's like i think most people don't realize that there's biker gangs out there that have so little regard for human life that they're just shooting at each other on the interstate there's people behind them i mean how scary is this well this is just one example there's lots of little independent gains and and they this is a this is a motorcycle gang and we have all kinds of gangs of criminals fortunately they behave most of the time and it doesn't come to our attention and these folks focused their their shooting toward each other but unfortunately why they're shooting each other driving down the road on the eastbound lanes there's people going the other way in the westbound lane at this point the investigation it appears that none of them were hit you know who knows after someone sees your television broadcast they may say well i thought that was a rock that i heard hit hitting my vehicle last night and they go out and find a bullet hole later today but the end result is and we've discussed it while the crime rate in polk county is at a 49-year low and it's historically low across this state all of this talk about nationwide about bail reform and holding criminals in jail it appears that is it has encouraged criminal conduct well let me give all of you a news flash that want to commit crime that jail reform business that's letting thugs and criminals out all over the nation it's not us it's not us those criminals let out early for their criminal mischief it's not us in florida so you're packing in the time being stupid out there behave behave or if you want to enjoy that low bell and don't go to jail new york and california is wide open and apparently they encourage that so go there and have a big time but if you come here and and continue with your angst it's going to be like the last three or four events where people were just off the rails it doesn't work here you're going to jail you're going to get a no bond we're going to try you our state attorney brian haas is simply the best and then we're going to send you to prison for the rest of your life personal choice you make a bad decision we're going to make a good decision guarantee i plan to do a wrap up next week we we haven't got into their backgrounds and their priors and that sort of thing at this point because we're still working this initial event i mean believe it or not we were hustling around to try to get that interstate open last night so it took all even though if you happen to be the one stuck in traffic it seemed like an eternity we were doing our best to get that road open as quick as we could for obvious reasons but we you know they took an 1888 old western shootout and brought it to 2021 last night this is the first time you heard of something like that that sounds like a scene from a fast and furious movie well i think they watched the movie and they wanted to emulate it last night but the unfortunate thing is we got we've got a a lady a beautiful lady if you know obviously we can't release her identity but i've seen i've seen photographs of her she's a beautiful young 33 year old lady that's near death and her boyfriend is locked up on on many many many death case charges we got another guy shot in the back it's just craziness fortunately because it was midnight and the interstate was not packed thick bumper to bumper there was room for bullets to move between cars had it been right now it's been a whole different story because it has bumper to bumper well in excess of the speed limit out there at this moment yes sir but see it it's apparent to us after trying to talk to this man he was born smarter than the rest of the world and only got smarter as he aged so he's he's someplace around uh 842 points on the genius range right now in in his mind and he didn't seem to care at all when he was talking to us and this is initially we weren't accused him of everything we just wanted to know what happened but i suppose that when you're trying to talk to a guy and he's got two empty holsters there he would need to have a lawyer because you got empty holsters that guy's got a hole in him your girlfriend got shot off the back of your motorcycle that ain't a good night anything else going once going twice have a good weekend we hope to give you a wrap up on this on monday and what are you doing out in polk county i thought you were behind the desk all the time i'm glad to see you again you do an awesome awesome awesome job and we miss you out here

Channel: FOX 13 Tampa Bay

Views: 3,458,092

Keywords: interstate 4, florida, I-4, shootings, motocyclists shot, motorcyclists shot florida, lake alfred, sheriff grady judd, polk county sheriff's office, deputies, i-4 shooting

Id: gmyAODN9EP8

Length: 18min 15sec (1095 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 08 2021