Miami jury convicts ‘lookout’ in El Mula banquet hall mass shooting on string of charges
Davonte Barnes, the 24-year-old admitted “lookout” during a mass shooting outside a Northwest Miami-Dade music venue could spend the rest of his life in prison after a jury late Friday found him guilty of a string of murder and attempted murder charges.
Barnes wasn’t accused of firing a single round. And more than two years after the gang-related shooting rampage devastated a community, he was the only participant facing prison time in the attack on a crowd outside the El Mula club that left three dead and 20 people wounded. Prosecutors had earlier decided to drop charges against one accused gunman because his confession to police came after he had requested a defense attorney and was likely to be thrown out of court.
But after five hours of deliberation, the 12-member jury still determined Barnes had played a key role in coordinating the brazen and violent mass shooting, which was captured on surveillance video that made national news.
Jurors, however, decided on lesser charges than the first-degree murder convictions that state prosecutors had sought. He was found guilty on three counts of second-degree murder and 20 counts of second-degree attempted murder — an indication that his defense attorney’s assertion that Barnes was unaware of the plans to open fire on a crowd outside the club may have resonated with jurors. They also acquitted him on a charge of conspiracy to commit murder.
There was little reaction in room 4-6 of Miami-Dade’s criminal courthouse after the verdict was read around 8:40 p.m. But outside the courtroom, family members of the victims cried and hugged. Desmond Owens and Clayton Dillard III, both 26, were killed in the shooting and an innocent bystander named Shankquia Lechelle Peterson, 32, who was taken to the hospital later died of her wounds.
Defense attorney Robert Barrar , who was appointed by the court to represent Barnes, said he would recommend that his client appeal the decision.
“The verdict makes no sense to me,” he said. “ The state said there was a conspiracy to take out ‘Foeback’ (the nickname of an intended target). But he was found not guilty of that.”
During closing arguments, Miami-Dade Assistant State Attorney Christopher Flanagan told jurors that Barnes planned the attack with others, showed up at the crime scene two hours ahead of time, relayed information, then left two minutes before the shooting began.
“He staked out, what was essentially, the kill zone,” Flanagan said.
Barrar the defense attorney portrayed Barnes as a naive young kid easily manipulated by police. The attorney never denied his client was at the shooting site, but said he had nothing to do with the crime. He also insinuated that police manipulated his client into admitting he was the lookout during two hours of missing audiotape that came from an interrogation of Barnes two years ago.
“They gave him two alternatives... you’re either the shooter or the lookout,” Barrar told jurors. “He couldn’t stand up to the badgering he was submitted to for hour after hour.”
The sheer braziness of the shooting outside El Mula on the Saturday night before Memorial Day in 2021 rocked the local community and law enforcement and came amid a string of high-profile shootings throughout Miami-Dade at the time that police believe were retaliatory attacks involving rival gangs.
Barnes, during videotaped interrogation before his arrest in 2021, told detectives the shooting stemmed from a fight between senior members of opposing Opa-locka gangs known as the Back Blues and The Bricks. He said after a meeting with several associates near his home, a decision was made to take out Antonio “Foepack” Jones, a local rapper who was part of a group that had a music release party at El Mula the night of the shooting.
Barnes said the shooting stemmed from a long feud between a gang member referred to as “Savage,” and “Foepack.” But, Barnes said, he was under the belief that Foepack would be taken to a secluded location and shot and not that the group would open fire as dozens of people were leaving the banquet hall.
Several weeks after shooting, Savage released a rap video on Youtube called “The Pull Up” that state prosecutors showed several times to jurors and that, they said, repeatedly referred to the incident and glorified it. Barnes was in the video, in some scenes holding a handgun.
Prosecutors believe that several members of The Bricks pulled into the parking lot at El Mula, 7630 NW 186th St., just before the show ended and opened fire with high-powered rifles as patrons were leaving. They believe the shooting came from the occupants of three vehicles, a white Nissan Pathfinder, a black Nissan Altima and a black Cadillac.
At about the same time Barnes was taken into custody, so was Warneric Anthony Buckner, another man who appeared in the Pullup video. Police believe Buckner was one of the shooters and charged him. But the charges were dropped and he was released after prosecutors determined detectives erred during their interrogation of Buckner, who they said invoked his right to counsel. Buckner was in prison earlier this year after the state also charged him with the murder of a 6-year-old Liberty City girl who was leaving a birthday party.
This story was originally published September 29, 2023 at 5:16 PM.
