Shots fired during a brawl killed a mom of 2. Did jurors find the gunman guilty of murder?
WEST PALM BEACH — A year before he killed 24-year-old Kassandra Morales, Marcus Hull told a police officer that he “shoots a lot and shoots straight.”
At a murder trial this week, the Lake Worth Beach resident told jurors that the opposite was true, that the bullets that struck Morales and wounded three others in a nightclub parking lot were accidental. That he pulled the trigger again and again to scatter the strangers — not hurt them.
Jurors didn’t believe him. They deliberated for six hours before convicting Hull, 33, of premeditated murder, paving the way for a likely life sentence in state prison. Hull turned down several opportunities to negotiate a plea deal with prosecutors ahead of his trial, opting instead to fight the charges against him.
In addition to murder, jurors convicted Hull of three counts of attempted murder — also punishable by life in prison — as well as aggravated assault with a firearm and discharging a firearm from a vehicle. Circuit Judge Jeffrey Gillen is scheduled to sentence him to prison on July 1, one month after what would have been Morales' 31st birthday.
Chance encounter at La Isla nightclub led to fatal shooting
Hull killed the Greenacres mother of two outside the La Isla Del Encanto nightclub near Palm Springs on April 29, 2018. He also wounded two security guards and a bystander before fleeing from the parking lot and eventually from the state.
Anthony Lorenzano, one of three friends who accompanied Hull to the club on the night of the shooting, told attorneys that Hull was "the kind of person that, if he gets mad, he'll shoot you." Nevertheless, Assistant Public Defender Stephanie Gagerie maintained that Hull didn't mean to kill anyone.
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Lorenzano said he and Hull arrived at the club well after midnight by happenstance; they were hungry, and La Isla sold food late. While the men ate chicken and plantains, Morales and her boyfriend shared a bottle of Hennessy with friends Kelvin Fajardo and Gabriel Delcid at a table nearby.
The two groups crossed paths shortly after 2 a.m., when Hull and Lorenzano stepped outside to smoke cigarettes. Morales' group had exited the nightclub a minute earlier to call an Uber for Delcid. Morales and her companions were strangers to Hull, but he said he saw a look of recognition pass between Lorenzano and Fajardo.
The men had a "longstanding beef" over a woman, Assistant State Attorney Francine Edwards told jurors. That feud was the catalyst for a brief but explosive fight between the groups outside the nightclub.
"Fists were thrown," the prosecutor said. "Punches were had. Glasses fell off."
Someone knocked Hull, at 6-foot-1 and 250 pounds, on his back.
By the time the club's security guards broke up the fight and began escorting Morales' group away, Hull had returned to his gray Chevrolet Equinox alone. He said Lorenzano, still searching for his glasses, was hidden from view.
"Reasonably believing that his friend is still being attacked, he does the only thing he thinks possible to help in that moment," Gagerie told jurors.
Hull started the car, turned off its headlights and drove to the nightclub's entrance, where he fired several shots out the window. According to Gagerie, he aimed at the ground.
Detectives found murder weapon at home of Hull's relative
Fajardo called Morales' mother at 2:16 a.m. "You have to come here," she said he told her. "Kassandra was shot."
Yamileth Rodriguez arrived at the club 15 minutes later, but her daughter was already en route to St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach. Rodriguez said she followed her there and was barred from seeing Morales while she underwent treatment. At 5:25 a.m., doctors told her she had died.
Detectives identified Hull as the gunman within hours with the help of surveillance video and witness statements. During a 40-minute interview at the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, Hull told detectives that he was in the nightclub parking lot when gunfire erupted, but he denied shooting anyone.
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Hull said he went to a family member’s house in Lake Worth Beach after leaving the nightclub. Deputies obtained search warrants for Hull's home and his relative’s, where they found a garbage bag containing the clothes Hull wore to the club and the 9mm semiautomatic gun he used to kill Morales and wound three others.
Hull, then 29 and with children of his own, was arrested in Georgia after Crime Stoppers of Palm Beach County offered a $3,000 reward for information about his whereabouts.
Morales was born in Miami but graduated from Lake Worth High School. She worked as a supervisor for a cleaning company and was a team mom in the youth baseball program at Phipps Park in West Palm Beach. A GoFundMe account in her name raised more than $15,000. The money went toward her funeral and savings accounts for her two sons.
“Kassandra-you were deeply, deeply loved and will be missed,” Morales’s family wrote in the post.
Caribe Group Enterprise, which operated the since-closed La Isla nightclub, agreed to a confidential wrongful death settlement with Morales' family in January.
Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hphillips@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Lake Worth man who killed Kassandra Morales convicted after six years
