9-Year-Old Girl, Reporter Shot Dead Hours After Morning Murder By Same Suspect

The three shootings left another member of the news crew and the child’s mother in critical condition.

Update: Florida television stations have identified the Spectrum 13 reported killed in Wednesday’s shooting as Dylan Lyons, a former anchor with WCJB in Gainesville. He left the north Florida station for Spectrum 13 in Orlando last year.

Spectrum 13 photographer Jesse Walden was critically injured in the shooting.

A 9-year-old killed in the shootings was identified as T’yonna Major, NBC reported. Her mother was critically wounded.

Original story:

Three people are dead — including a 9-year-old child — and two others are in critical condition after a series of three shootings in Orange County, Florida, on Wednesday.

Also dead are a woman in her 20s and a member of a Spectrum 13 news crew, Orange County Sheriff John Mina said. Another member of the news crew and the 9-year-old’s mother are in critical condition, he said.

Deputies have arrested Keith Melvin Moses, 19, who is the suspect in all three shootings. Mina said he was an acquaintance of the woman killed in the morning shooting but investigators don’t know why he returned to the scene in the afternoon and say he had no known connection with the news crew or the woman and her daughter.

The news crew was on hand to report on the morning shooting. Mina said it’s not known if Moses targeted them because they were with the media — their vehicle, he said, “didn’t look like a typical news vehicle.”

“It’s possible he could have mistaken them for law enforcement, but there was a photographer there,” Mina said.

“Hopefully at some point he’ll talk to us about what these motives were,” the sheriff added.

Mina said deputies were called at about 11 a.m. to the first shooting in the Pine Hills neighborhood. They found a woman dead in a vehicle at the scene and began their investigation. Investigators quickly developed Moses as the suspect in that shooting.

Just after 4 p.m. — after detectives had cleared the scene and towed the vehicle involved — deputies were called back to the same location for another shooting, as well as one at a home about a block away. At the first scene, they found a reporter and a photographer from Spectrum 13 shot outside their vehicle. The two men were rushed to a hospital, where one of them died, Mina said.

Around the corner, a woman and her daughter had been shot inside a home. They, too, were rushed to a hospital, where the girl died.

Detectives working the new shootings identified Moses as a suspect and learned he was the suspect in the morning shooting as well. He was located nearby and taken into custody. Mina said the suspect isn’t talking so far but was armed with a handgun when he was arrested.

Moses, who has an extensive criminal record, has been formally charged with the morning murder. Mina said charges are expected in the other four shootings as well.

The names of the other victims have not been released.

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[Featured image: Dylan Lyons/WCJB]