Lawsuit accuses Orange deputies of failing to notify Pine Hills accused killer Moses on loose
The lawsuit focuses on killings hours after investigators said Moses shot 38-year-old Natacha Augustin as he sat behind her in the backseat of his cousin's car.
According to the 36-page complaint filed Monday in federal court, deputies didn't issue an alert about Moses while an unnamed deputy at the scene — identified in the filing as 'Deputy John Doe' — waved off Brandi Major's concerns before she and 9-year-old daughter T'Yonna were shot in their home. T'Yonna was killed and Moses went on to fatally shoot Spectrum News 13 reporter Dylan Lyons, 24, as he sat in a news van, the lawsuit said.
The complaint was brought on behalf of T'Yonna and Brandi Major, who survived, as well as Lyons' estate. Augustin is not a party to the lawsuit, as she was Moses' first victim.
Though the lawsuit mentions agency policies it argues discriminate against Pine Hills' mostly-Black population, none were specifically cited. Rather, lawyers at NeJame Law, which represents Major's and Lyons' families, told reporters Tuesday that existing policies about alerting the community of criminal activity are unequally applied in what legal partner Ryan Vescio called a 'policy of complacency.'
'Crime is acceptable nowhere, so in a situation like this we do believe there is a demonstration of acceptance that these things are going to happen and the citizens of Pine Hills are just going to have to deal with it,' Vescio said. 'Although, if this were another neighborhood that Mark [NeJame] lives in or I would live in, then everybody would know as soon as it happened. That's just wrong.'
In a statement, a sheriff's office spokesperson called the claims in the lawsuit 'unfounded' and the agency's legal team will seek a motion to dismiss the case. It added: 'Keith Moses is the only person responsible for the heinous acts of violence that took the lives of three of our residents and gravely injured two others. We grieve those losses along with our community.'
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Moses faces the death penalty after being charged with the murders of Augustin, T'Yonna and Lyons — which took place within a mile of each other around Harrington Drive and Hialeah Street. Reports released in that case show deputies cleared the scene hours after Augustin was killed. Moses, however, remained in the area and entered the Majors' house through an open back door and shot T'Yonna and Brandi Major several times before leaving.
Lyons was parked outside near the home and was shot while working. Moses also injured Jesse Walden, the cameraman who accompanied Lyons, the suit said. Walden has not been party to any lawsuits regarding the shootings.
According to the lawsuit, Moses was identified by the sheriff's office through his cousin, who was driving when Augustin was shot in the passenger seat, but the agency did not release his name or issue a description as they looked for him. The complaint further alleges nearby residents weren't notified of the situation while an unnamed deputy told Brandi Major 'everything is under control' when she asked about law enforcement's activity in the area.
'We expect better,' NeJame said. 'A 9-year-old little girl was killed because the sheriff's office waved a mother in with her daughter and didn't tell them that there was a murderer on the loose and had been on the loose and had killed somebody earlier.'
The lawsuit against OCSO is the second one related to the killings. The first accused Spectrum News 13, an Orlando Sentinel news partner, of failing to provide proper safety equipment or conducting 'an appropriate risk assessment' before sending Lyons to Pine Hills, where he was assigned to cover the shooting that killed Augustin.
That complaint raises questions of the obligations news organizations have to keep their reporters safe in the field. It's also an unusual one — incidents documented by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, which monitors attacks on reporters and news outlets, show nearly all of the 322 instances of reporters shot on duty in the last 10 years were by law enforcement, and only 25 of them resulted in lawsuits.
Of those lawsuits, just one was against a news organization: The Capital Gazette and the Baltimore Sun, which settled in 2023 after they were accused of wrongful death and negligence for the 2018 newsroom massacre that killed five people on staff.
A statement from Spectrum News denied the claims in the lawsuit brought by Lyons' family, calling his death 'an unforeseeable and horrible tragedy.'
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