Man who shot wife at North Dade pool was questioned in his ex’s 2014 disappearance

The man who police say shot his wife to death in front of her daughter, other children and parents at a Jewish community center pool in Northeast Miami-Dade had attacked and stabbed her a day earlier, but managed to elude arrest.

Carl Monty Watts Jr., 45, also has a long and troubling criminal history. He had been questioned in the mysterious 2014 disappearance of a previous girlfriend and mother of his child — a Fort Lauderdale woman who has never been found.

On Monday, Miami police supplied new details leading to the shocking shooting at the Michael-Ann Russell Jewish Community Center on Sunday afternoon. They said Watts had stabbed Shandell Harris early Saturday morning, then tried applying “crude” first aid before driving the woman to her mother’s home.

Harris’ mother then convinced her daughter to call police around 3 p.m. but when officers got to the home, Watts had already fled. A team from the city’s domestic violence unit was still searching for Watts when, less than 24 hours later, he gunned Harris down at the community pool.

“Unfortunately,” said Miami Assistant Chief of Police Armando Aguilar Jr., “he found her before we found him.”

Harris was with her daughter at swim lessons at the center when Watts approached around 2 p.m. According to an arrest report from Miami-Dade County Police, he began “offering the victim money to drop the charges against him.”

She refused and asked him to leave.

Watts then took out a firearm and began shooting the 30-year-old woman. When she collapsed, Watts “stood over the victim and continued to shoot her until he ran out of live cartridges,” the report said.

Private security guards soon captured Watts. Police said a gun was found in an open field adjacent to the JCC at 18900 NE 25th Ave.

‘She wouldn’t hurt a fly’

Lee Hanna, a friend of Harris who graduated from Miami Northwestern High School with her in 2010, said she had a brief conversation with Harris about Watts not long ago. Hanna said Harris told her they were “having problems,” but wouldn’t elaborate.

Hanna said her friend was preparing for the couple’s upcoming one-year anniversary party, which was going to take place at a banquet hall.

“She was sweet, wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Hanna said. “But I never heard her say she was scared or worried or anything.”

Aguilar and arrest forms from Miami-Dade police provided a partial timeline of events over the weekend. Harris was first stabbed at about 7 a.m. Saturday in a home she shared with Watts. The couple married about a year ago. After he stabbed her, Aguilar said, he threatened to kill himself.

“She talks him out of it,” said Aguilar. “He applies a pretty crude first aid to the knife wounds, then they run a few errands.”

He said Miami police were notified of the stabbing by the call from her mother’s home at about 3 p.m. An officer responded and called in a detective and crime scene technicians who photographed Harris’ injuries. The exact timing of those steps wasn’t immediately clear.

The stabbing injuries to Harris were serious enough for her to visit the hospital, but not serious enough for her to be admitted, Aguilar said. It wasn’t immediately clear how long she spent at the hospital.

Aguilar said the department’s domestic violence apprehension team began searching for Watts Sunday morning, starting with the couple’s home. He wasn’t there. It also wasn’t immediately clear if police had put out a BOLO, or Be On The Lookout order between the time they first visited Harris at her mother’s home Saturday and when the domestic violence apprehension team went searching for Watts the next morning.

Watts is jailed on charges of second-degree murder and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. He has a history of convictions that include fraud and grand theft. He also has long been considered “a person of interest” in the unsolved disappearance of a Fort Lauderdale woman and mother of two children nearly a decade ago.

‘Person of interest’ in 2014 case

Watts fathered a child with Trukita Jaquita Scott, who has been missing since she failed to pick up her two children from a day-care center in June 2014. She was last seen leaving her job at U-Haul in Miami Gardens and heading to Liberty City to meet up with Watts. Her missing car was later found in Liberty City.

Her father, Charles Scott, 52, said Watts acknowledged to the family that she visited his home to pick up money for their child, but denied having anything to do with her vanishing. Charles Scott said Watts has long been a suspect in his daughter’s vanishing — and he was sickened when he saw the news of his arrest Sunday.

“It’s unfortunate. I’m sorry for the family of Ms. Harris — they’re going through what we went through,” Charles Scott told the Herald on Monday, adding that he believed Watts knows where his daughter may be buried.

Watts turned himself in to police several weeks after Scott’s disappearance, but to face charges of violating the conditions of his supervised release stemming from a federal weapons conviction. Watts pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 11 months in prison.

WTVJ Channel 6 reported at the time that Scott’s supervisor said their relationship was so tumultuous, he had to file a restraining order against Watts just to keep him away from where she worked.

A month before Scott disappeared, Watts also had been arrested and charged with battery and false imprisonment for attempting to force a teenage girl at a bus stop into his car. That charge was later dropped.

Aguilar said Miami police are aware of his connection to the missing woman and will discuss that investigation with Fort Lauderdale police.

This story was originally published April 4, 2022 at 10:07 AM.