Police have no suspects so far in the shocking murder of three best friends who were “massacred” on their way to a secluded Florida lake to fish, but Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said Monday the reward for information has been raised to $30,000.
Damion Tillman, 23; Keven Springfield, 30; and Brandon Rollins, 27; were beaten and shot at about 10 p.m. Friday night. Rollins managed to telephone his father with the word, “Help,” bringing the older man to the scene. But all three were pronounced dead when medics arrived, as CrimeOnline previously reported.
Judd said Rollins had a few words with his father before he died but did not share the the names of whoever assaulted the trio. “If we knew, we would have them in custody,” the sheriff said, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Rollins’s father, Cyril Rollins, told WFLA about the phone call.
“We heard some background, and they fussing all that,” he said. “But I left, I went on out here. When I got there I was looking for my son. It was a mess. I found my son. I was holding him. He was telling me what happened, but I was too shocked to know what was going on.”
Judd said he isn’t ready to reveal what Rollins said to his father and said detectives so far didn’t believe the men were killed in a drug deal gone bad or a domestic situation. A robbery seemed out of the question as well, he said, because items of value were found in the trucks. Still, the sheriff said his agency has received “more than 100 tips” and does not believe it was a random crime.
“It’s way out in the country, a little clay road,” he said. “It’s used as ingress and egress for cow pastures, orange groves and Lake Streety. It’s a road to no place, three miles long.”
The three men arrived in two trucks. When detectives arrived on the scene, Tillman’s was facing south, and the other was facing north. He has not revealed how the bodies were found — or Rollins’s last words — but said the details gave detectives “a lot of information.”
Judd did note that the spot on Lake Streety is a “party location, kids show up Friday and Saturday night to drink, smoke dope,” not something the three friends would likely have been unaware of.
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[Featured image: Damion Tillman, Brandon Rollins, and Keven Springfield/Facebook]
