‘I didn’t shed a tear’: Smiling suspect with head ‘shaped like a football’ accused of murdering 2-year-old girl, wounding her grandparents after he broke into their home

Left: Bles’Syn Lightner (Buggs Funeral Home). Right: Clifford Long (Brevard County Jail).

A 37-year-old Florida man allegedly broke into the home of a multigenerational family and shot a 2-year-old girl dead and wounded her grandparents.

Clifford Long was indicted for first-degree murder in the death of Bles’Syn Lightner along with two counts of attempted murder. According to a probable cause arrest affidavit, Melbourne police responded around 10:40 p.m. Aug. 29 to a home in the 900 block of Poplar Lane for a shooting.

When officers arrived, they found a 48-year-old woman and a 54-year-old man suffering from gunshot wounds. The victims were seriously injured but conscious. Cops then found Bles’Syn in a bedroom suffering from a gunshot wound to her forehead. Paramedics pronounced her dead at the scene.

There were also four other adults and two other children at home at the time, all of them uninjured. Bles’Syn had just celebrated her birthday four days before her death and lived at the home with her parents, who were at a concert at the time of the shooting, and her grandparents.  There were no signs of forced entry at the home and the surviving victims initially denied knowing who shot them.

But in subsequent interviews, the male victim identified the shooter as Long, who is known as “Goof.”

“It is worth noting, Clifford Long’s appearance identically matches [the victim’s] description of the suspect as being a tall, thin, light-skinned [B]lack male with a head shaped ‘like a football,'” investigators wrote.

The surviving male said he saw Long shooting his granddaughter before he stepped over the girl’s body and started firing at him, according to the affidavit.

Long later allegedly admitted to his brother that he killed the girl, saying “They wouldn’t come off that money,” indicating that the possible motive for the shooting was related to a robbery or drugs. He also allegedly told his brother that he didn’t mean to kill Bles’Syn.

About a week after the shooting, Long and his brother allegedly stabbed a homeless man over 30 times and chopped off his finger with a machete over a drug-related dispute.

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When interviewed by cops about the alleged murder, he denied involvement and claimed he was at a gas station at the time of the crime. He said he knew Bles’Syn’s father but did not know the family very well, though he heard about what happened.

“To be honest with you, I didn’t shed a tear but my condolences to the family,” he said, per cops.

Long has been in the Brevard County Jail for the machete attack since September. He remains behind bars without bond. His next court date is set for May 20.