Four days before Sergio Hostins was reported missing and subsequently found dead, he exchanged phone calls and took nude photos of the man charged with killing him while the two men were in the victim’s home, according to police.
The two men had exchanged phone calls back and forth on Oct. 4 and the victim took the nude photos of Daniel Daveport, 31, that same evening, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. Three days later, Davenport showed up at his brother-in-law’s home frantically asking, “How far offshore would you have to go to dump something so it would not be found,” explaining that “he had a body he needed to get rid of.”
On Oct. 8 when a friend of Hostins reported him missing after not hearing from him in six days, the victim’s body had not yet been found.
The next day, the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office was notified by the Collier County Sheriff’s Office that they had found Hostins dead, his body wrapped up in carpet, air-conditioning duct tape and plastic bags lying near the construction site of a home being remodeled in Naples.
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On Friday, Davenport was arrested in Orlando after being sought for more than a week. He was apprehended by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office’s Fugitive Unit and U.S. Marshals Florida Regional Fugitive Task Force.
Davenport was booked into the Orange County jail and will be sent back to Sarasota County to face murder charges.
According to Sarasota sheriff’s office detectives, Hostins was never seen or heard from again following the time the two men shared together on Oct. 4 inside Hostins’ apartment in the 6000 block Medici Court in Sarasota. They had met online, according to sheriff’s office.
Crime scene investigators in Collier Couny identified latent fingerprints on the carpeting and the plastic bags as belonging to Davenport, leading to him being identified as a potential suspect early in the investigation.
The contractor hired to remodel the home near where Hostins’ body was found told detectives that Davenport had been hired to remove some trees from the property. On Oct. 8, he drove a green Subaru to the construction site, according to the affidavit. Hostins was the registered owner of a green 2000 Subaru Forrester that Davenport was spotted driving in Tampa and Orlando while he remained at large, according to authorities.
A witness also told Collier sheriff’s office detectives that they had seen the green Subaru in the Naples home’s driverway before Hostins’ body was found.
When detectives searched Davenport’s home in the 200 block of Pelican Road in Venice, they found carpeting, duct tape and plastic bags similar to those used to hide Hostins’ body. A search of the victim’s iPad inside his apartment, revealed the communication between the two men on Oct. 4 and the nude photos of Davenport that Hostins apparently took.
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