Keith Eric Agee was convicted of first-degree murder for fatally shooting Brooklyn Sims. (Screenshot: WEAR)
A Florida man shot and killed the mother of his toddler, believing the victim gave him an STD, but prosecutors produced evidence that she didn’t have such a condition.
Now Keith Eric Agee, 20, who testified that he did attack Brooklyn Sims, 18, at her Home Depot workplace, has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The murder case against the defendant’s mother, Sheila Agee, 50, remains ongoing.
Authorities in Escambia County, Florida, said that Keith Agee was incensed at believing he received an STD from Sims. His mother, who worked at the same Home Depot as the victim, allegedly egged him on.
“Ok I’ll call you and tell you mf if you want to go to jail I’ll tell you when we get close but if you don’t come kill her you a mf b–ch,” she wrote in a text, according to deputies. “Don’t call nanny and tell her she will try and talk you out of it.”
They also allegedly discussed deleting evidence of their conversation.
“Hold up let me get it erase the texts cause I don’t want nobody to know I was texting you stupid a–,” she allegedly wrote.
Before her arrest for being a principal to first-degree murder, Sheila Agee attended a balloon release held in Sims’ honor.
The defense for Keith Agee, who was charged with first-degree murder, argued at trial for a lesser charge.
The defendant testified on Tuesday that he tested positive for an STD days after having sex with Sims, according to Pensacola ABC affiliate WEAR.
But prosecutors had presented evidence that Sims did not have an STD. She sent Sheila Agee a picture from an Aug. 5 doctor appointment showing she did not have such a disease.
“I know in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter,” State Attorney Bridgette Myers Jensen said, according to WEAR. “But we just wanted to give Miss Sims a little bit of dignity.”
Feeling angry, hurt, and betrayed, Keith Agee left his job on Aug. 11, 2023, grabbed his gun from home, and drove 90 minutes to the Home Depot store where Sims and his mother worked, according to his testimony. He said his mother told him Sims’ location, and he confronted the victim.
Though seeing her initially assuaged his anger, it returned when she walked away from him mid-conversation, he said.
“I pointed my finger at her and said, ‘You gave me something,”” Agee said. “She said, ‘Not this again,’ and turned around and proceeded to walk off from me. I’ve never been so mad in my life. … I pulled my firearm from my waistband and I proceeded to shoot Brooklyn.”
He testified that he would not have shot her if she had not turned her back to him.
Two of Sims’ co-workers testified that before the gunshots, they heard Agee tell her she “gave him something,” according to The Pensacola News Journal. One of them, Michael Benson, said Agee was already holding a gun when starting to talk to Sims.
The judge on Wednesday called the shooting a “textbook definition of premeditated murder because you got mad and blamed her for something, in disgusting irony, that wasn’t even her fault.”
“And if you had taken any time to think about it, you would have found that out,” the judge said.
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