Bullet key to arrest in Summerlin Road shooting

SOUTH FORT MYERS, Fla. — A single bullet found in the head of the victim of a fatal March shooting on Summerlin Road led to an arrest six months later.

The markings on the bullet matched up with the gun that Lee County Sheriff’s Office deputies found with Dalvon Deon Lawrence, an 18-year-old Cypress Lake High School student facing manslaughter charges in the wake of his Thursday arrest.

The bullet struck 43-year-old Friedrich “Fritz” Timmerman, whose car careened down Summerlin before crashing into a concrete wall along the road near the Whiskey Creek community, resulting in his death.

Indentions that detectives examine on bullets and guns help them solve crimes like this one, as firearms expert Dave Grossi explained to WINK News.

“You can match up just like fingerprints, just like DNA,” Grossi said. “As this bullet is coming out of the barrel, it’s being cut by those lands and grooves, and it’s leaving markings.”

Other evidence also proved helpful. Deputies said cell phone records put Lawrence, who has a lengthy criminal record, near the scene when the crime took place.

Deputies said Lawrence told a witness he was smoking and drinking near a basketball court and shot randomly at a car as it passed by on Summerlin. Lawrence also told the witness that it was only through watching a news report on television that he knew he had killed someone.

Lawrence is facing a manslaughter charge, and not a murder charge, because authorities don’t believe he intended to kill anyone when he fired his gun.

The witness spoke to authorities, and deputies later spotted Lawrence walking in the neighborhood near the scene.

He appeared to be hiding something in his pocket, deputies said. When they tried to talk to him, he took off running, and the arrest took place once deputies caught up to him.