Key West business owner found guilty of murdering football coach‘s son
A Key West business owner faces life in prison after a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder Wednesday in the 2023 Super Bowl Sunday shooting death of the son of a high school football coach.
Garrett Hughes, 21, a former standout football player for Key West High, was urinating on the wall in the rear parking lot of Conch Town Liquor and Lounge around midnight Feb. 13, 2023, when Lloyd Preston Brewer III walked up to him and shot him once in the torso.
Brewer’s attorney said Thursday he will appeal the verdict and denies the shooting was premeditated.
Brewer, 60, owned the North Roosevelt Boulevard building that houses Conch Town Liquor and Lounge, but not the bar itself.
Both men were in the bar hours earlier drinking and watching the Kansas City Chiefs narrowly beat the Philadelphia Eagles in the 2023 Super Bowl.
READ MORE: Key West business owner charged with 1st-degree murder in Super Bowl Sunday shooting
The crime shocked the Southernmost City. Hughes comes from a well-known family in town, and his father, John Hughes, coaches the Conchs high school football team.
Brewer claimed he shot the younger Hughes in self-defense. He told Key West police officers in an interrogation room hours after the shooting that he feared for his life in the moments before he pulled the trigger. He said he went outside because he noticed a large group of people, including Hughes, gathering in the parking lot.
When Brewer walked outside, he saw Hughes urinating on the wall, and he verbally confronted him, he told police.
“He came at me in a threatening manner and appeared he was reaching for something on his side,” Brewer said in the interrogation video that has been viewed by the Miami Herald.
But, prosecutors said security camera footage and eyewitness testimony counters the self-defense claim. The footage shows Brewer walk towards Hughes, turn back, then walk back toward him with his hand on the butt of a handgun he had in his waistband, said Chief Assistant Monroe County State Attorney Joseph Mansfield.
As he got close to Hughes, Brewer drew the weapon in a two-hand stance and fired twice, striking Hughes once, Mansfield said.
“This was not an act of self-defense,” Mansfield said in a statement. “Lloyd Brewer had the opportunity to disengage but chose instead to return to the confrontation armed and use deadly force. The jury saw the evidence, rejected Brewer’s account, and held him accountable for a premeditated killing.”
Hughes’ friends rushed to his side to render aid, according to police. Medics took him to Lower Keys Medical Center where he died while doctors prepped him to be airlifted to a Miami-Dade trauma hospital, according to court documents.
Key West journalist Gwen Filosa, who covered the trial, reported on her Substack that Brewer did not take the stand. The 12-person jury took almost five hours to deliberate Wednesday, according to Filosa.
When interviewed by police, Brewer said he warned Hughes that he was armed but that the younger man kept coming at him. Brewer said he fired twice: The first shot hit Hughes, and the second went up in the air because Hughes was almost on top of him.
“I stood my ground. I feared for my life. Period,” Brewer told cops, according to the video interview.
The grand jury that charged Brewer with first-degree murder in June 2023, however, disagreed, writing that he fired his gun with “premeditated design to effect the death of a human being.”
Brewer’s attorney, Jerome Ballarotto, said he will appeal the conviction because he said the judge in the case erred in allowing prosecutors to refer to Brewer as “the aggressor” and by not telling jurors that under Florida law, his client was allowed to confront Hughes with his hand on the gun, before he drew the weapon.
“A defense attorney’s job is to present the case in the best light for the jury, and that’s what we did. While I don’t believe there was premeditation, you can’t argue with the jury,” Ballarotto said Thursday. “We feel the judge made an error in what he told the jury.”
Brewer is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 26 by Judge Mark Jones, who presided over the trial, which began last Thursday. Under Florida law, first-degree murder is punishable by life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“This case showed a conscious and deliberate decision to escalate a confrontation into deadly violence,” Major Crimes Assistant State Prosecutor Colleen Dunne said in a statement Wednesday. “We are deeply grateful to the witnesses who came forward and testified, knowing the difficulty and responsibility that come with telling the truth in a murder trial. Their courage, combined with clear video evidence and thorough investigative work, ensured that justice was done for Garrett Hughes.”
This story was originally published January 22, 2026 at 8:27 AM.
