Three South Florida victims tied to JCC shooter Carl Watts. All were working moms.
Police say Carl Monty Watts Jr., 45, gunned down his wife, Shandell Harris, 30, at a Jewish community center pool in Northeast Miami-Dade on April 3, 2022. He’s now facing a charge of second-degree murder with a deadly weapon.
But according to police and family members, he’s also now being investigated in connection with the mysterious fates of two other women — one who was found murdered in 2009, the other who vanished in 2014. Each had been in a relationship with Watts, a one-time garbage man with a long rap sheet.
Here’s a look at the victims associated with Watts, starting with the most recent case:
▪ Shandell Harris: The 30-year-old Harris was gunned down at the Michael-Ann Russell Jewish Community Center on April 3. Her husband, Watts, was immediately detained and charged with second-degree murder with a deadly weapon.
Harris was with her 11-year-old daughter, Simiyah, for a swimming lesson when Watts confronted her at the pool, demanding she retract accusations she’d made that he stabbed her the previous day at their home in Miami, police said. Harris and Watts did not have a child together.
“She did everything for her marriage, everything for her child,” said her cousin, Aaron Batten. “She was a selfless person. She didn’t deserve to die like this.”
Relatives described Harris as a smart, sweet and religious woman who grew up in a large and tight-knit family. She was athletic — she ran track in middle school — before graduating from Northwestern High in 2009, said Batten.
After high school, Harris had moved to live alongside her grandfather in Albany, Georgia, where she’d earned a license as a registered nurse. There, she took an interest in local politics, hoping to one day become an elected commissioner.
After her grandfather died a couple of years ago, Harris moved back down to Miami, and worked driving Uber and Lyft and also construction with her brothers, family said.
Her brother, Tyrel Harris, said she wanted to write books and she wrote poetry. He said the two planned on doing a mixed tape, with her reading poetry and him rapping over it.
“She was amazing,” he said.
Harris had been married to Watts for almost a year, although he was not very talkative with her family. “He came around family events. He didn’t typically want to be in family photographs. We didn’t say anything,” Batten said. “He kept to himself. He didn’t talk much.”
▪ Trukita Scott: The 24-year-old was last seen in Fort Lauderdale on June 25, 2014. She remains a missing person, her case still under investigation by Fort Lauderdale police.
A mother of two children, Scott grew up in Miami Gardens and had worked two jobs: with U-Haul and as a home health worker for mentally challenged adults. Scott hoped to one day become a Miami Gardens cop, and had even gone on a ride-along with an officer not long before she vanished.
According to her family, the day she went missing, she was supposed to meet up with Watts, her ex-boyfriend and the father of her son, C.J., in Miami. She was supposed to pick up money for her child, said her father, Charles Scott.
READ MORE: JCC shooter was ‘person of interest’ in 2014 disappearance of Fort Lauderdale woman.
Watts told the family that they met up and she left. He denied playing any role in her disappearance, Charles Scott said.
Six days after she disappeared and was labeled a “missing endangered person,” Miami police found Trukita Scott’s 2007 Altima in the area of Northwest 40th Street and 10th Avenue.
Wanted for questioning, Watts surrendered to authorities on an outstanding federal arrest warrant. But he was never arrested for Trukita Scott’s disappearance and remains a “person of interest” in her vanishing, according to Fort Lauderdale police.
▪ Vickie Simmons: The 25-year-old North Miami Beach mother of two vanished in February 2009.
Her family reported her missing. Two days later, her body was discovered at the Sun N Surf Inn, 11102 Biscayne Blvd. Miami-Dade police, which is handling the investigation, did not release how she was murdered.
Simmons grew up in Miami and attended Booker T. Washington High. She had studied real estate and loved to dance, said her sister, Lashon Jones. “She was mostly on the quiet side,” Jones said.
Watts and Simmons had dated for a couple of years, her sister said, and the two had gotten into an argument over her working as an exotic dancer.
Jones said that a Miami-Dade police detective long ago told her that Watts was a suspect but there hadn’t been enough evidence to charge him. “If this case would have been solved a long time ago, there wouldn’t have been more victims,” Jones said.
A Miami-Dade police spokesman on Tuesday said it’s cold-case homicide squad would be “re-visiting” the case but declined to name Watts as a suspect or a “person of interest.”
This story was originally published April 5, 2022 at 6:29 PM with the headline "Three South Florida victims tied to JCC shooter Carl Watts. All were working moms.."