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James Z. Powell Wiki – James Z. Powell Biography
A 20-year-old Florida man will spend more than four decades behind bars for shooting and killing the father of a high school classmate after crashing the boy’s house party four years ago. Seventh Circuit Judge Raúl A. Zambrano on Friday ordered James z. Powell to serve 45 years in a state penitentiary for fatally shooting 45-year-old Joel Tatro in the man’s home, court documents reviewed by Law&Crime show. .
Powell, who was 15 at the time of the shooting, was convicted by a Volusia County jury in March on charges of second-degree murder and aggravated assault. In addition to the decades of imprisonment, Judge Zambrano sentenced Powell to probation for the rest of his life.
Powell was initially charged with attempted first-degree murder because Tatro, who suffered a gunshot wound to the neck, initially survived but was paralyzed from the neck down. However, Tatro, in March 2022, died “of COVID-19 with complications from the gunshot,” the medical examiner determined, Orlando CBS affiliate WKMG-TV reported.
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James Z. Powell Age
The age of James Z. Powell is 20 years.
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James Z. Powell charged with murder
According to a probable cause affidavit, Tatro hosted a party for two of his children and their high school friends on the night of February 16, 2019, at his home in Oak Hill, about 50 miles northeast of Orlando. About 20 people attended, police said.
At about 1 a.m. m. on February 17, a dark blue Dodge sedan carrying several people pulled up in the driveway of Tatro’s home. Several witnesses told police that they immediately recognized Powell and two other males from the school as they exited the vehicle and approached the Tatro residence. None of them had been invited to the party.
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Partygoers confronted the intruders before they arrived at the home and told them the party was “by invitation only, and they should probably leave,” the affidavit says.
“Powell refused to go and started swearing. Joel Tatro walked over to where the group was and told Powell that he was trespassing and he had to go,” police wrote. “Powell said, ‘You don’t know who you’re fucking with,’ and he pushed Joel Tatro, who then pushed him back. In response to being pushed, Powell yelled at [Tatro], ‘I’m going to kill you,’ and Powell then pulled a black 9mm pistol from the waistband of his pants, pointed it at [Tatro], who was about three feet away. away, and started shooting.
Tatro immediately fell to the ground after being hit in the neck by one of the bullets. At least six witnesses told investigators they were within four feet of either Powell or Tatro and the moment of the shooting and said he fired three or four shots. After the shooting, Powell and the two men he was with got back in their vehicle and fled. Rescuers arrived shortly and transported Tatro to Halifax Hospital in Daytona Beach, where he was listed in critical condition.
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Before being sentenced, Powell went to the S. James Foxman Justice Center courtroom and pleaded for leniency, attempting to blame the pandemic as the primary cause of Tatro’s death. “But this situation was never supposed to happen,” Powell said, according to The Daytona Beach News-Journal. “This was a COVID death, sir. I never meant to hurt him.” However, Powell’s words reportedly did not affect Judge Zambrano’s opinion of his actions.
“People have the right to be safe in their own home,” the judge was reported as saying. “Mr. Tatro was in his own home. And it behooves the rest of the world to respect people in their homes. You didn’t do that. I don’t know why you didn’t do that. And you complicated everything by arming yourself with a firearm. And then use it. The crime itself is so heinous. It is so heinous that it resulted in the death of a human being.”Read More…….
