Realistically, Gov. Ron DeSantis or Sen. Rick Scott can’t speak out on every gun violence death in Florida. The toll is too great: More than 3,000 lives lost each year, an average of more than eight people a day.
But when a case draws national attention, it might behoove either of those men to express some sorrow. Some recognition of the shattered potential that each death represents. A promise, however hollow, to find solutions to the gun violence that claims so many lives.
What Floridians would never expect — what they could barely imagine — was the spectacle of their governor and junior senator tumbling over each other to exploit a high-profile mass shooting in pursuit of a political vendetta. Until last month, when they did just that.
Until last month, when DeSantis and Scott eagerly weaponized the brutal, random slaughter in Pine Hills of a 38-year-old woman, a 9-year-old girl and a 24-year-old journalist in a shooting that left two other people wounded. Until last month, when both politicians moved so quickly they didn’t take the time to make sure what they were saying was true.
Until last month, when Floridians watched them cling to their falsehoods even after the facts came out — then maintain a stony silence, with not a word of apology to the heartbroken families or the two survivors of the shooting or any attempt to correct their slander of State Attorney Monique Worrell, who DeSantis clearly intended to follow the fate of Andrew Warren, the Tampa-based prosecutor he illegally removed from office last year.
This is the same governor who has said, repeatedly, that media organizations should be “held accountable” if they libel public officials such as himself —- and proposed to shatter long-established legal safeguards that protect freedom of speech for all Americans to accomplish that. The hypocrisy would be breathtaking, if it were not overshadowed by the much larger disdain DeSantis and Scott have shown for these and other victims of gun violence.
Lies, then silence
Here are the bare facts:
The news of the shooting broke late in the afternoon of Feb. 23. It started with the shooting death of Nathacha Augustin, a 38-year-old Pine Hills woman. Spectrum reporter Dylan Lyons and cameraman Jesse Walden were among the journalists responding to the scene. Police say the same man who shot Augustin returned to the scene and shot the two journalists, killing Lyons and wounding Walden, then fled to a nearby house where he killed T’Yonna Major and wounded her mother. Officials quickly identified their chief suspect, Keith Melvin Moses, a 19-year-old with a long history of juvenile offenses.
Within a few days, DeSantis, in a rambling response to a question at a news event, attempted to pin blame on Worrell. According to multiple sources, here’s what he had to say: “I can’t believe they let this guy…you have to hold people accountable. …I know the district attorney, state attorney, in Orlando thinks you don’t prosecute people, and that’s how you somehow have a better community, that does not work. You have these people with multiple arrests, multiple times where they can be held accountable, you keep cycling them out into the community, you are increasing the chances that something bad will happen.”
Scott went even further, saying “State Attorney Worrell must immediately account for how her office failed to protect the community from a violent criminal.”
They stuck to that claim even after their story unraveled: Moses’ juvenile offenses occurred before Worrell took office. His lone arrest as an adult — on a drug charge — did not rise to the level of criminal prosecution. Even after those facts were established, DeSantis continued to cast blame, demanding public records that might be dredged for any crumb of accusation to fling at Worrell.
This needs to be said: We believe Worrell would have done anything she had the legal authority to do, if she could have saved the lives that were lost. But she never had that chance.
This isn’t the first time DeSantis has been accused of stony indifference to the victims of gun violence. But this incident was so egregious that the Lyons and Major families had to hold a press conference to beg the governor and senator: Please stop exploiting the deaths of the people we loved.
Speaking through their attorney, the families had this to say:
“The families believe this all smells and smacks of political opportunism, by both DeSantis and Scott, and it is appalling to them. If DeSantis and Scott truly cared about these victims, they would not only have reached out to them, but they could be addressing the issues of gun violence and reasonable and sane gun legislation,” attorney Mark NeJame said.
Since then, silence — as with 10 other mass shootings the Gun Violence Archive has identified in Florida in 2023 so far, from Miami Gardens to Lake City. So far as we can tell, neither DeSantis nor Scott has even bothered to acknowledge the people whose lives were ended, or forever changed, by gunfire. So we will:
Dylan Lyons. T’Yonna Major. Nathacha Augustin. Brandi Major. Jesse Walden.
Governor, senator: We’ve given you time to repent of the words that magnified the grief of their families and the greater Orlando community. It’s time you admit that you were wrong. It’s time you said their names.
____
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com
____
