Police Chief Addresses Gainesville Homicides and Domestic Violence

Editor’s Notes: On May 26, less than a week after this meeting, another shooting occurred in Gainesville resulting in the death of a 23-year-old woman.

On May 21, the Gainesville Police Department held their first quarterly update for 2026. The update primarily covered January 2026 through March 2026, but Chief Nelson Moya talked about homicides that have occurred more recently.

Moya also announced that combating domestic/dating violence has become one of GPD’s top priorities.

Moya recalled January 14, 2026, where an individual was killed in a shooting. The gunman was also killed, but not before shooting and injuring two police officers. The same day, GPD arrested Tierra Scott-Franklin, 23, for drowning her 7-month-old daughter in the bathtub. 

Moya acknowledged the homicide that occurred on May 1 where an individual was shot in the Phoenix community and died from their injuries. GPD hasn’t announced any arrests in this case.

Moya regarded another shooting which occurred on Mother’s Day near 2700 NW 6th St., resulting in the death of a 17-year-old boy. Moya said the investigation is ongoing and confirmed a suspect has been identified. Moya said they’re in discussions with the State Attorney’s Office. The homicide “was certainly not a random act of violence,” he added, but said it’s not gang-related.

Moya said, “As I’m at that call, I get notified of another one, now at the Pleasant Street neighborhood. This now is a reported stabbing.”

Moya indicated GPD was “familiar with” the homicide victim in the stabbing case. 

Moya didn’t say his name, but the victim has been identified as Ricky Morrow.

Morrow was allegedly killed by Henri Prichon Hart, 43, who is held in pretrial detention for a 1st degree murder charge.

“The culprit and the victim knew each other,” said Moya, emphasizing the homicide wasn’t a random act of violence. 

Still not naming Morrow or Hart directly, Moya indicated they had “beef” which resulted in violence. Moya said the “culprit” has been convicted of multiple felonies and that they “have his admissions.” 

City Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut questioned, “One of the incidents—I guess you’re gonna talk about this later—dealt with domestic violence?”

Moya asked Chestnut if he could be vague regarding that homicide because he wants the case to be resolved successfully.

Moya said, “We do have indication in that case—in one of our cases—that the suspect and the victim are very well familiar to each other and very well connected through blood… We continue to work that case. I would love to get into all the details but I wanna bring the case to a successful resolution… Even before that we had highlighted domestic violence as something we needed to continue to look at—now more deeply. I had a discussion with our pastors group as we do every month… [It was asked] ‘How’s domestic violence looking?’ I remember saying, ‘Well, it’s pretty steady but let me get some numbers…’ We started compiling that data in conjunction with what we see everyday… I began to get worried… What I see is just an ongoing steady flow of familial violence… It’s also of concern... the [instances] of repeat acts of domestic violence by the same offender..." 

Moya compared domestic violence and sexual violence, saying there’s been a consistent stream of sexual batteries similar to domestic crimes. Moya said he hopes focusing on domestic violence has an additional effect of decreasing sexual violence.

Moya announced that he’s adding three detectives on the special victims unit and that one would be assigned to domestic violence. He said they used to have two detectives for domestic violence because the positions were grant-funded, but now they’re putting one back into the role. 

Moya said everyone’s doing what they’re supposed to do but he wants to make improvements in combatting domestic violence and find gaps within the police, the State Attorney’s Office, Peaceful Paths, and other entities.

Moya shared domestic violence crime statistics from 2022 through April 27, 2026. 

Moya went on to say, “Primarily, I want to ensure our victims are serviced first above anybody else. But there may be opportunities for offenders also to receive services so that they don’t repeat violence, because sadly, oftentimes what we see is that in many cases these relationships come back together. That’s just a fact.”

Moya said that many times his officers will make a “valiant effort” to find domestic violence offenders but are unable to do so amid frequent calls for service. In these cases, officers will file a sworn complaint to press charges instead of an arrest report. Moya said he wants to reduce sworn complaints because it can lead to the offender returning to the home and repeating violence.

Moya went on to share gun related statistics before inviting Lt. Lonnie Scott Jr. to share data on open/closed cases.

Scott said he is the commander in the criminal investigations division serving under Captain Summer Hallett.

Scott said, “The Gun Violence Unit continues to push through with the mission which is ‘do our best to try to alleviate a lot of the gun violence going on in our community.’ You’ll see a lot of search warrants and things like that working in conjunction with our [Major Crimes] A-Squad… We get a lot of these offenders and these crimes that occur, the shootings and things like that, they also kind of take the lead with our A-Squad to go make contact with these people, arrest them and help with the search warrants.”

Scott shared statistics that show the number of people charged by the Gun Violence Unit per quarter.

Scott brought up a “highlight of a case” where officers conducted a traffic stop on an individual and arrested him on felony charges for allegedly possessing 605 grams of cannabis with intent to sell and possessing a firearm while committing that felony. 

Commissioner Ed Book said it was his understanding Crime Stoppers, a crime reporting website, played a part in a violent crime arrest. Scott confirmed that was correct and indicated it helped with Ricky Morrow’s case. 

Book said he wants to see “aggressive prosecution” for violent offenders. “We wanna take them out of the community so they can’t victimize others,” he said. “Part of that is also showing a message that those who might consider taking an action that’s gonna victimize somebody affects the victim, [their] family, and it affects even the suspect’s family… It destroys them all… I know this may sound controversial but I hope that we’re not seeing them in our community.” 

Book said there’s a “very small percentage of people who don’t get the benefit of getting a second and third and fourth chance, where most offenders do. That’s what we do, we provide literacy… education… [and] support services for property crime [offenders]… But once you’ve taken action as egregious as this, there’s a place for you, and it’s not in our community.”

Operations Bureau Captain Tim Durst said they’ve gotten “nuisance type complaints” at “Campus Walk,” likely referring to Campus Walk Apartments or the surrounding area. “We’ve been working with code enforcement and increasing our efforts there,” he said. 

Durst added that they’ve had “some issues” at the Polos Apartments, prompting them to “put extra patrols out there.”   

Durst shared photos of seized firearms and a chart indicating their primary patrol points.

Durst said the Operations Bureau is at the “forefront of the houseless outreach,” working with the City Manager’s Office, Special Projects Administrator Phil Mann, Public Works and Code Enforcement. Durst shared a chart showing where they’ve made contact with homeless individuals. 

Commissioner Casey Willits brought up the Polos Apartments and commented on how it’s a very large apartment community. 

Durst said, “It was almost like a loitering and prowling that was occurring. What seems to have occurred is that there were probably a couple of unrelated events and a couple related events, meaning I think we had two things going on at once, and I think one was specifically targeting a single resident. That resident has moved and those issues have kind of gone away...”

Moya further commented on the Polos, saying there were “two different incidents. You had some gun related issues because we had a pocket of juveniles that were stealing guns from unlocked vehicles… It was actually a patrol operation that wrapped us up and led to the arrests… And a prowler in once specific apartment that we were able to address.”

Major Jamie Kurnick talked about community engagement efforts and said GPD attended 16 crime-watch meetings throughout the quarter. She said the meetings led to referrals for “problem houses, drugs issues, traffic issues, and then we address them by engaging some of the other units to be able to go out and attack those issues individually, because the expectation from the community is that when we come to the meeting the next month we have an answer.” 

Kurnick also shared data on the co-responder unit, where a mental health clinician will respond with an officer. She said the unit is fully staffed.

Sgt. Lynn Valdes shared vehicular homicide and crash statistics. She said that a few weeks ago a pedestrian was killed and the number is now four this year. Valdes added that one incident had multiple victims so they’re talking about three actual crashes.

Valdes further shared traffic stop and citation statistics, saying GPD is participating in the click-it-or-ticket campaign. 

Sgt. Johnathan Castor shared recruiting and hiring statistics. 

Castor said they had 13 officers in the field training program this quarter, seven of which have gone solo, and six are working on finishing. He said they have five potential officers at the Santa Fe College Public Safety Academy who are set to go into GPD’s training after graduating. He said on Monday they’ll be swearing in five additional officers to enter field training, which is a 14-week program. 

Castor said GPD is asking for the “best of the best.” 

Moya shared photos of himself with officers and civilians who received awards at the March 27 ceremony.

Moya said Officer Larry Prunty received the Metal of Valor award for an incident that occurred in 2024.

In September 2023, Prunty was sworn in with other officers.

Less than two months later, while still in training, Prunty was arrested for allegedly holding a kitchen knife to a child. The Alachua Chronicle reported that Prunty was allegedly laughing during the incident, while WUFT reported, "The child told police that Prunty put a knife to her neck and back several times. In one incident over the summer, Prunty held the knife to her back where she felt it pinch her skin and warned her, 'Don’t move, don’t move,' police said. When she objected, police said, Prunty told her she was being a 'cry baby.' A witness, who was also not identified in court records, confirmed the incident, police said. Prunty told police the episode never happened." However, Prunty reportedly did say that "an incident with a knife occurred in Tallahassee, but he didn’t remember it other than that he was cooking."

Prunty was charged with child abuse but prosecutors dropped the case and it was expunged from court records.