Fingerprints, phones link men to woman's 2020 slaying, West Palm police say in making arrests

WEST PALM BEACH — Two men are now facing first-degree murder charges in connection to the fatal shooting of a woman on the last day of 2020 in West Palm Beach.

Police allege that James Tooks III, 26, of West Palm Beach and Antwane Thurston, 37, of Pahokee were involved in the death of 37-year-old Ashley Curtiss, who was shot in her vehicle as she waited at a stoplight on 45th Street near Interstate 95 early on the morning of Dec. 31, 2020. Curtiss' death was the last of 99 homicides to occur in Palm Beach County that year.

Both Tooks and Thurston are being held without bail at the Palm Beach County Jail. A public defender is representing Tooks and the state Office of Regional Counsel is representing Thurston. As a policy, neither office comments on open cases.

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Police have not said whether they recovered weapon in the West Palm Beach shooting

Arrest reports for the two men do not indicate a motive for the shooting or say whether police recovered a weapon.

Investigators say a relative of Tooks rented the 2020 Chevrolet Malibu that pulled up alongside Curtiss' Cadillac at about 12:30 a.m. that day and that fingerprints from the Malibu and its window tint matched those of Tooks and Thurston.

Witnesses told police investigators that the Malibu, a dark-colored vehicle with darkly tinted windows, pulled up next to the passenger side of Curtiss' Cadillac, according to the arrest report. They described seeing a person with an assault rifle hanging out of the driver's side rear window and firing shots through the Cadillac's front windshield.

The Malibu turned up behind an abandoned residence on the 1400 block of West 32nd Street in Riviera Beach, investigators said. The officers who found it noted that window tint had been removed from the vehicle and discovered it discarded in the of backyard of the residence, the report said.

In the hours after the fatal shooting, Tooks called Riviera Beach police to report that the rented Chevrolet had been stolen, according to the arrest report. He reportedly told officers the vehicle had been taken while it was parked at a residence on West 27th Street.

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Victim was driving westbound toward I-95 at time of shooting

The National Gun Violence Memorial website said Curtiss worked as a behavioral health specialist. The police report said she went to an apartment complex along the 4000 block of 36th Court to meet a person about an hour before the attack.

Surveillance-camera video showed her leaving that location at 12:12 a.m. and traveling north on Australian. She was traveling west on 45th when the fatal attack occurred, police said. The Palm Beach County Medical Examiner's Office said she died of multiple gunshot wounds.

Cellphone records for Tooks and Thurston place them near the scenes of the shooting and the Chevrolet's abandonment and track them communicating "before the homicide and numerous times in the early morning hours after the homicide occurred," the arrest report said.

Julius Whigham II is a criminal justice and public safety reporter for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at jwhigham@pbpost.com and follow him on Twitter at @JuliusWhigham. Help support our work: Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Two face murder charges in 2020 West Palm shooting of Ashley Curtiss