Vigil planned for hearing-impaired Bradenton area man who was shot to death
Friends and neighbors will gather Friday evening to hold a candle-light vigil for a hearing-impaired Bradenton man who was shot dead Sunday.
The Manatee County Sheriff’s Office, meanwhile, is still investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting, including the shooter’s claims that the shooting was in self-defense. He has not been charged.
Neither the victim nor the shooter have been identified by the sheriff’s office but friends and neighbors identified the victim as 43-year-old Demetrick Edwards. His family has invoked Florida’s Marsy Law, according to sheriff’s office spokesman Randy Warren, so the sheriff’s office will not confirm his identity.
Deputies responded to a duplex home in the 500 block of 33rd Avenue Drive East in Bradenton to reports of a man shot on Sunday afternoon. But by the time they arrived, Edwards was already dead in the middle of the front yard.
The shooter identified himself to deputies but said that he shot Edwards in self-defense.
Friends and neighbors gathered outside the home on Monday, where a memorial had been set up, questioned the self-defense claim, saying Edwards was not known to be armed and that he was well-liked in the neighborhood.
“He wasn’t a bad person,” Kourtney Kammerer said. “I don’t know why they would do him like that.”
Edwards spoke loudly often and was difficult to understand at times because of his hearing impairment, friends said.
At 7 p.m. Friday, friends and neighbors will gather outside near the home where Edwards was shot dead and hold a candle-light vigil. He was known as the “neighborhood clean-up man” because he did yard work and other work for people around the neighborhood.
Family friend Chauncey Julien said Edwards even helped her by cleaning her bathroom after she had surgery once.
“Self-defense,” she questioned. “What did he have, his bicycle?”
Edwards was known to local law enforcement having been arrested at least 30 times in Manatee County.
He was last released from prison in April 2020 after serving time for a third conviction of petty theft and sale or delivery of cocaine. His previous time in prison were for convictions for petty theft and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
This story was originally published September 22, 2021 at 3:52 PM.
