Left: Jo Lobato. Right: Angel Lobato. Inset: Danne Frazier (Polk County Sheriff”s Office).
Two Florida brothers will spend the rest of their days behind bars for murdering a man one of them met online and established a fake relationship so they could kill him in order to establish “street cred.”
Angel Lobato, 23, and Jo Lobato, 24, were sentenced to life in prison after juries convicted them of first-degree murder, armed robbery and other charges in the 2020 death of Danne Frazier. Angel Lobato received his sentence last week while his brother’s fate was sealed in November.
According to prosecutors, Jo Lobato sparked a conversation with the 21-year-old Frazier online about a month before the shooting under the false pretense of a potential romantic relationship. But the Lobatos had no intention of romance — they actually wanted to rob and kill the victim because they saw him as an “easy target,” prosecutors said.
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“In doing so, they would earn their ‘stripes’ in the streets,” a press release said.
Jo Lobato convinced Frazier to meet him after he got off work in the area of Central Park in Winter Haven. As Jo Lobato and Frazier walked in the park, Angel Lobato lay in wait armed with a baseball bat behind a tree. The plan was for Jo Lobato to distract Frazier with a “kiss” and for his brother to start attacking him with the bat.
But Frazier started fighting back, so Jo Lobato “choked him out,” according to police. The suspects then shoved Frazier in his car while Angel Lobato started beating the victim with a baseball bat.
“Angel advised he leaned into the backseat and cut the victim’s neck with the knife Jo had been armed with,” police wrote in the probable cause arrest affidavit. “Angel advised he cut the victim’s neck several times.”
The Lobatos drive Frazier to an overgrown wooded area on Helicopter Road in Lake Wales, where they dumped his body and covered the remains with branches. Frazier’s mother reported him missing on Nov. 4, 2020, and workers conducting an environmental study found the body about a week later.
Police arrested the Lobato brothers 10 days later.
“These two brothers are pure evil in the flesh. Danne Frazier was just a good kid, trying to comfort someone he met online,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said after the arrests. “They murdered him just so they would have ‘street cred.’ I have no words for this kind of evil. My heart goes out to Danne’s family. They raised a good young man, and they don’t deserve this.”
