Lake County Sheriff's Office investigates a shooting death in Umatilla
UMATILLA — Lake County Sheriff’s detectives are sifting through clues and hoping someone will step forward and help solve the fatal shooting of a man who was a homicide suspect himself in 2015 in a gang shootout in a crowded bar parking lot.
Deputies were called to 39946 Merrell Ave. at 3:25 p.m. Tuesday in a 911 call about shots fired. When they arrived, they found Antwain Jamar Hart, 31, dying of a gunshot wound. He died in the ambulance on the way to Advent Health Waterman.
Investigators learned that his 2022 white Jeep Grand Cherokee had been stolen. It was found in a church parking lot in the 1500 block of State Road 19 in Eustis.
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Anyone with information can call Crimeline at 1-800-423-TIPS, where they can remain anonymous and collect a reward.
Hart was a suspect, then a witness, in a 2015 case
On Aug. 23, 2015, Hart was at the center of a murder investigation at Jesse Black Saloon in Leesburg.
He was seen in a surveillance video exchanging words with Saderris Tarver, 22, as the bar was getting ready to close, according to court testimony. Tarver and other gang members known as the “Zellwood Boys” watched as he left, then walked outside, too. Two minutes later, Tarver would be dead.
Two groups of people began shooting at each other across the crowded parking lot on U.S. 441.
Bullets were flying and shell casings were bouncing off the paved lot as people dived for cover.
Hart was originally a suspect, but he had been firing a 9mm handgun. Tarver was shot with a .45-caliber round. His group was using .45-caliber handguns, and he was hit from behind, which meant that he was shot by someone in own group, which included his brother.
Hart and a friend went to the bar that night in his mother’s Chevy Camaro, which ended up with a bullet hole in the driver’s side door.
“I told her someone tried to shoot at me. I told her they tried to take me out… I shot back,” Hart testified.
“It was clear that Hart was being fired upon by at least two individuals," Assistant State Attorney Hugh Bass told the Daily Commercial in 2018. It was self-defense, he said.
Prosecutors dropped third-degree felony murder charges against him, as well as charges of being a convicted felon with a firearm and discharging a firearm in public. He had been convicted of possessing and selling oxycodone two years earlier and was sentenced to two years in prison.
Prosecutors later charged Darius R. Alexander, 22, with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, but he was acquitted. Tarver’s brother, Shelton Rucker, was charged with second-degree murder but he has not yet gone to trial.
This article originally appeared on Daily Commercial: Lake County, Florida sheriff investigates shooting death in Umatilla
