Jury finds Sarasota man guilty of manslaughter connected to fatal Ackerman Park shooting

"I'm gonna air this b**** out."

Those were the words three witnesses claimed hearing the night of Dec. 29, 2021, before their friend allegedly stuck a black revolver outside the window from the backseat of a gold Hyundai and fired multiple shots into a crowd of roughly 50 people at Ackerman Park.

One bullet fatally struck 18-year-old Dylan Jenkins, a graduate of Riverview High School and star athlete, who was home from college for winter break.

Jenkins was pronounced dead by paramedics in a nearby public library parking lot.

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Nyquan Priester, 22, sat at the defendant's table, staring straight ahead as his former friends each took the witness stand to testify against him.

All three of the state's primary witnesses (Sa'tayvia Monix, Cameille Homer-Cunningham and Kalvion Turner) described what happened the night of the shooting, each testimony corroborating the others.

A six-person jury on Thursday found Priester to be guilty of manslaughter and guilty of discharging a firearm from a vehicle within 1,000 feet of a person. The jury found Priester not guilty of tampering with physical evidence.

He faces a possible maximum sentence of up to 30 years in prison.

Priester's defense attorney, Omar Abdelghany, continuously pointed out that all three witnesses had closer relationships with each other than his client — with two being blood-related cousins — and that all three had lied to police multiple times when giving statements before pointing the finger at Priester.

State's witnesses describe what they say happened the night of the shooting

For many in the courtroom Tuesday afternoon, it was clear Homer-Cunningham was reluctant to testify. The now 23-year-old slouched in her seat with her hand resting on her face, often mumbling her responses, and was asked multiple times to repeat her answers so everyone could hear.

In December 2021, Homer-Cunningham had been friends with Monix and Turner, who was also her stepsister's baby father. She said she'd known Priester through a mutual friend and had been friends with him a year or two before the shooting.

The night of Dec. 29, 2021, the group had learned about the party at Ackerman Park through Turner, Monix said.

All three witnesses said they arrived at the party late that night, and the only source of light was from the headlights on the cars. When the car pulled up, each witness said the driver's side of the car was closest to the road, while the passenger side was facing the park.

Turner admitted he acquired a black revolver which Priester had wanted to borrow to have with him for the Pineapple Drop in downtown Sarasota on Dec. 31. Turner brought the gun with him on Dec. 29 to give to Priester, leaving the gun behind in the car while the group walked around the park, Turner said.

As the group headed back to the car, they spotted a group who had just pulled in that included Jenkins and another man with whom Turner had previously had a dispute months before, Turner said.

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When the group got back into the car, Homer-Cunningham sat in the driver's seat, Monix sat in the passenger seat, Turner sat behind the driver's seat and Priester sat in the rear passenger seat, all three witnesses said. That's when Priester allegedly asked about the gun, said he was going to air it out, shot it three times into the air, and then pointed and fired into the crowd to scare them, according to Turner.

The four drove off to Homer-Cunningham's residence, their minds clouded with thoughts of what had just happened, they said.

Later that night, Monix and Turner both confirmed they had gone for a drive with Priester hours after the shooting, with Monix saying she simply needed to clear her head. They drove to Whitaker Park where Monix and Turner remained in the car, sitting in silence, while Priester left for several minutes.

Monix said she assumed Priester had left the car to get rid of the gun, although she hadn't seen a gun at all that night, including in the defendant's hand. Homer-Cunningham also testified she hadn't known there was a gun in her car that night.

After several minutes, Priester returned and the three drove back to Homer-Cunningham's residence where the police would show up around 5 a.m. The three witnesses testified that they gave multiple statements to police, lying to them several times, before ultimately telling the truth.

Police were unable to speak with Priester, who later fled to Utica, New York, and was arrested more than two weeks after the shooting by the U.S. Marshals Service.

Surveillance video pulled from a condominium complex near the Whitaker Park shoreline showed a light-colored car pulling into the part in the late-night hours of Dec. 30 and pulling out 10-15 minutes later. In another video which captured part of the bay and the pier, a person can be seen walking under the lamp post, disappearing from view for several minutes, and then crossing back under the light.

As Abdelghany pointed out in his questioning of Det. Brandon Keats, it is impossible to tell who the person is, whether it is a man or woman, or to see any distinguishing features. It was simply "a subject" who walked in and out of the frame.

More than a month after the shooting, a Sarasota Police Department dive team was training just off the shore of Whitaker Park when they found a black Smith and Wesson revolver lying on the murky ground in the bay. The gun was extracted and sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Web searches from Priester’s phone revealed that multiple searches had been done about whether someone could buy a Greyhound bus ticket if they had a bench warrant.

Texts from Priester’s phone to at least two individuals mapped out his route from Sarasota to Utica. One text in particular mentioned people telling on Priester and that he needed to get out of Florida and that he didn't want to be caught by police.

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Defense's case here

On Wednesday, Abdelghany called three witnesses as part of the defense's case including Homer-Cunningham's former boyfriend who was picked up following the shooting, and a man who had had a heated exchange with Turner months before.

Back in December 2021, Zy'Davion Moore had been dating Homer-Cunningham for a little while before the night of the shooting, according to his testimony. While Moore hadn't been at the park when the shooting happened, Homer-Cunningham picked him up shortly afterward with Priester, Turner and Monix in the car.

The 26-year-old testified that when he was getting into the car, Homer-Cunningham was in the driver's seat, Monix was in the front passenger seat and as he was getting into the back seat from the passenger side, Turner was sitting behind the driver and Priester had been in the middle.

However, when Abdelghany pointed out that in a police statement Moore had given to police in January 2022 days after the shooting, he had said that Turner was sitting in the middle, not Priester. Moore stated that that was the correct positioning.

During cross-examination, Assistant State Attorney Karen Fraivillig pressed about how it was that Moore's memory was better in 2024, three years after the shooting, compared to his memory in 2022 during his deposition where he said he couldn't remember who was sitting where in the back seat. Moore said he had simply wanted everything to be over with and that he hadn't wanted to be in the deposition.

Yet, he was adamant Wednesday that Turner was in the middle and Priester was behind the driver — bringing into question who the shooter was since the gun was fired from the rear passenger side window.

Abdelghany further pointed out how his client didn't have any animosity towards Jenkins or anyone else at the park, including Zepharin Williams. However, according to testimony, the one person in the group who had supposedly been upset with Williams the night of the shooting was Turner.

Williams testified that when he saw Turner, he noticed he had a fanny pack that he kept patting. When asked by Abdelghany what he thought that meant, Williams said he assumed it meant there was a gun in the pack.

Williams also testified that the last glimpse he caught of Turner, the then 20-year-old, was standing by an open rear passenger door. When asked if he saw Turner get into that side of the car before the shots rang into the air, Williams said he hadn’t.

Priester chose to exercise his right to not testify on Wednesday before the jury.

During his closing arguments, Abdelghany focused on how the three State witnesses had been pressured into changing their statements, how Turner had benefited from receiving a plea deal, so he had an interest in the outcome of the case, how each witness seemingly conspired to point the finger at his client, and how each of them wasn't a reliable witness. He pointed to the fact that Turner had deleted texts and calls from their phone before going to the police while his client hadn't done that.

As far as the reason why his client ran, Abdelghany said it was because Priester had been scared and didn't trust the police, he knew people were turning on him and saying he was the shooter and he just wanted to avoid the police.

“Credibility is the quality of being trusted and believed in," Abdelghany said. "Credibility is about reliability, about honesty, about the truth, about being straightforward. This case is all about credibility ... Ask yourself do I know; do I know beyond a reasonable doubt what happened that night? Am I certain in my heart? Has it been proven beyond a reasonable doubt?”

Gabriela Szymanowska covers the legal system for the Herald-Tribune in partnership with Report for America. You can support her work with a tax-deductible donation to Report for America. Contact Gabriela Szymanowska at gszymanowska@gannett.com, or on X: @GabrielaSzyman3.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Jury finds man guilty of manslaughter in 2021 Ackerman Park shooting