The DeLand double murder case has turned into a hard look at what authorities say was a long trail of arrests and lenient outcomes before two young men were killed. Florida officials said the 17-year-old accused in the shooting that left Citadel cadet Dustin Rose and his friend Samson Campbell dead had been charged repeatedly since 2021, but kept avoiding serious consequences.
DeLand police said Rose, 19, and Campbell, 18, were found dead around 10:40 p.m. on July 29. Officials announced Tuesday that they had obtained an arrest warrant for a 17-year-old male, who was taken into custody Wednesday by the U.S. Marshals Service. At a Wednesday news conference, authorities said the three knew each other in some capacity. Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood said the teen had a “pretty good criminal history,” including aggravated battery, assault with a deadly weapon, carrying a concealed weapon, multiple counts of battery, criminal mischief, vehicle theft, trespassing, drug possession, another aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and resisting an officer.
Chitwood said those cases dated back to 2021 and were “either dropped, non-filed, dismissed, or at best, resolved with probation.” He said the teen had also been in a diversion program before the alleged killings, tied to drug possession and disturbing a school function. The sheriff argued that the system’s handling of the earlier cases may have played a role in what happened next, and he pointed to what he described as weak prosecution by State Attorney Monique Worrell in Florida’s Ninth Judicial Circuit.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier also criticized Worrell, calling her “neglect of duty and incompetence” a danger to the circuit and saying, “Soft on crime policies do not work!” Worrell pushed back, saying Uthmeier was making politically motivated comments without knowing all the facts. She also said the most recent case Chitwood cited did not fall under her circuit, but under the Seventh Circuit, which she said was outside her office’s jurisdiction to discuss.
