Tag: Florida

Folks are outraged over the one-year prison sentence given to a white Florida man who shot and killed his Black male lover.

Gardner Kent Fraser, 32, was charged with – and pleaded guilty to – tampering with evidence in the investigation of the 2018 shooting (and killing) of 31-year-old Dominic Jerome “DJ” Broadus Jr.

But Fraser was never charged for the actual killing of Broadus. Fraser told investigators he shot Broadus in self-defense, and under Florida’s ‘stand your ground law,’ prosecutors are tasked with proving the accused wasn’t acting in self-defense.

A spokesman for the 4th Judicial Circuit issued a statement regarding the charges filed which read, in part, “The investigation has not generated evidence to disprove Fraser’s claim of self-defense.”

“The evidence in this case, Fraser’s unwavering claims of self-defense, and Florida law do not provide support for homicide charges,” added the spokesman. “We are ethically prohibited from instituting criminal charges that we cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.”

Dominic Broadus Sr, the father of the victim, said Fraser “fatally shot my son in the back of the head twice” to “hide his feminine, bisexual nature.”

He added Fraser attempted to “destroy any evidence of their relationship by deleting all text from his phone and destroying/hiding my son’s phone, then calling three people before reporting the shooting to the proper authorities.”

After shooting Broadus, Fraser was asked if he knew the victim. “Ahh, I believe I do” was his reply.

Police say Fraser got rid of Broadus’s phone in an effort to hide communications between the two men. Even without Broadus’s phone, police were able to determine via forensic analysis of Fraser’s phone that the two men had been involved in an intimate relationship.

Although Fraser had deleted text messages from his own phone, investigators were able to recover 115 phone calls and 35 text messages between the men from Fraser’s phone. According to reports, many of the messages and images were “sexual in nature.”

Because Fraser is the son of a retired Baker County police deputy, the case was turned over to the 4th Circuit State Attorney Melissa Nelson in an effort to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest.

But many locals say they believe prejudice and racial bias still came into play in the case.

Anita “Baker” McGoogin, who co-organized protests in support of the Broadus family, told News4Jax, “It’s brought light on to what everyone already knows: The prejudice is here. The racism, that’s here. The favoritism, that’s here.”

Additionally, The Root has reported that Fraser’s family has “deep ties to the Ku Klux Klan.”

At his sentencing, Fraser was adjudicated as guilty, and sentenced to one year in county jail to be followed by 4 years supervised probation with community service.