‘She shot herself in the head,’ a Keys man told 911. That isn’t what happened, cops say
Sean Booth Chidester made a late-night call to 911 on July 14, reporting that his girlfriend had killed herself with his handgun at the home they shared in the Florida Keys.
“She’s dead and she shot herself in the head,” Chidester told the dispatcher, according to an arrest warrant filed by the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. “She’s dead in my kitchen.”
But deputies didn’t buy his story — and soon found the facts didn’t match Chidester’s claims.
On Friday, while already locked up in the county jail on Stock Island for a week, he was charged with murdering Daniela Blackburn. His bond was set at $1 million.
“We made the decision Monday of this week,” said Joseph Mansfield, chief assistant state attorney in Monroe County.
Chidester was already in jail on a $40,000 bond for violating a no-contact order meant to keep him away from Blackburn. But prosecutors and police knew they were working a murder case.
“We decided this was going to be a homicide charge, but we also knew he was in custody,” Mansfield said. “We knew we were safe knowing he wasn’t going anywhere.”
Chidester, 39, listed as a mechanic in jail records, was living in a makeshift apartment inside a warehouse in the 1000 block of Sixth Avenue in Marathon.
Blackburn, 38, had stayed with him but also at times, slept in a storage unit he owned.
“We went out to the scene,” Mansfield said. “No running water, no bathroom. It’s a storage unit. There’s this couch and a bed. This was not designed to be a living facility. They had pieced together a living area.”
Monroe deputies knew them both well before she was killed by a gunshot to the head.
Blackburn made a number of domestic violence reports between March 5 and July 5, when she checked into a Keys domestic violence shelter.
The night he called to say she had died by suicide, Chidester had a no-contact order in effect meant to keep him away from Blackburn.
A history of violence
Since early March, Blackburn had been the one calling 911. Others — a friend in Virginia, a neighbor who took her in — said Chidester was attacking her.
He grabbed her hair and threw her to the floor twice, according to reports, and struck her face. She locked herself inside a bathroom on June 12 because he threatened to hurt her, she told 911. Six days later, he told police he locked her inside a garage because they were arguing. He was arrested on a false imprisonment charge. He was handed a no-contact order.
On July 1, however, after telling deputies Chidester had once again dragged her by her hair — this time from a hallway to the front door — Blackburn said she didn’t want to pursue criminal charges.
“He has a beautiful side to him,” Blackburn told them.
On July 1, she was at a shelter and stayed there for several days, prosecutors said.
By 11:38 p.m. Thursday, July 14, Blackburn was dead.
Deputies found her lying on a red couch in the warehouse apartment. She had a gunshot to her head from Chidester’s 9mm Sig Sauer handgun.
Her head had rested on an armrest, and was tilted to the right side.
It was suicide, Chidester told deputies several times.
“I didn’t do it,” a shirtless Chidester told deputies. “I swear to f---ing God. I didn’t see her for five minutes before she shot herself.”
Ring cameras were set up in the warehouse, he said, and he offered to show the video. In it, Blackburn can be seen in the background on the couch while Chidester is partially out of frame. He moves around the camera, which is then pointed at a wall.
“I didn’t move that camera,” he told deputies. “She did.”
Chidester didn’t want to go to the sheriff’s office Marathon substation. He was read his rights.
Then he stopped talking.
No history of suicidal tendencies
Deputies didn’t stop at Chidester’s version of events.
An autopsy showed Blackburn had been shot in the top of her head, in the center, according to an arrest affidavit from the Monroe County State Attorney’s Office. The Monroe County Medical Examiner’s Office said it couldn’t release the autopsy report to the Miami Herald/FLKeysNews.com on Friday because it’s waiting on toxicology results.
Still, nothing about the wound suggested it was self-inflicted, prosecutors determined.
“Detectives found Blackburn had no prior history of mental illness or suicidal tendencies,” sheriff’s office spokesman Adam Linhardt said in a statement on Friday.
Within two days of Blackburn’s death, Chidester was arrested on a charge of violating conditions of his pretrial release for the false imprisonment case, by breaking the no-contact order with Blackburn, and was booked into jail. His bond was set at $40,000.
On Friday, Chidester was still in jail, but now charged with murder in Blackburn’s death. His bond for the murder charge is $1 million.
It was not clear Friday afternoon whether Chidester has legal representation.
Monroe Sheriff Rick Ramsay called it a “sad case,” noting that few murders happen in the Keys.
“When they do occur,” Ramsay said, “the sheriff’s office will always work aggressively and vigilantly to resolve them as quickly as possible.”
This story was originally published July 22, 2022 at 3:27 PM.
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