In an apparent effort to discourage onlookers, bedsheets were used for a couple of days to try to conceal the hotel name where the Sept. 20 murders occured. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By Larry Barszewski and Jane Musgrave
Boca Raton was on pace to hew to a one-murder-a-year crime statistic this year — that is, until gunshots erupted Sept. 20 in a hotel parking lot on State Road A1A.
Mayor Scott Singer, trying to put the city’s best face on the double murder that took place there, said the “incident was more shocking because homicide and violence in our city are so rare.”
He praised police and assured residents they were well protected during a city-arranged appearance with Police Chief Michele Miuccio in front of TV cameras and other media three days after the shootings.
“This was an isolated incident, but the swift response by our Police Department is part of their continued excellence,” Singer said.
How swift? Barely 12 hours passed from when two hotel guests from Oakland Park were shot to death at 365 N. Ocean Blvd. — and a third person wounded — to when the suspect after fleeing 500 miles up the coast was pulled over in his 2017 silver Jaguar by a Georgia sheriff’s deputy and taken into custody.
The scene at 365 Ocean, a self-described boutique extended stay hotel on A1A across from South Beach Park, where a room could be had on Booking.com for as low as $131 a night in September, became a hub of police activity that Friday after the first 911 call came in at 4:53 p.m.
The murders were the first on the city’s barrier island since February 2020. That’s when police say a homeless man was stabbed and strangled to death by his homeless son while the two were spending the night at a since-demolished parking garage at A1A and Palmetto Park Road.
The 365 Ocean deaths were the second and third killings in the city this year, following a murder-suicide earlier in September. There had been only one murder recorded in the city in 2022 and again in 2023.
At 365 Ocean, the initial reports from police point to a purse-snatching gone bad, though police say the people involved may have known each other and there may be more to the story.
“We can’t definitively say they were all friends, but it does appear that they did know each other and it wasn’t random that they were just somebody that was walking by that stepped in,” Miuccio said.
Police at the scene of the shootings, after which the suspect, a Boynton Beach resident, drove 500 miles before his arrest. Larry Barszewski / Coastal Star
Suspect and victims
As of Oct. 1, De’Vante LaShawn Moss, 30, of Boynton Beach, still sat in the Laurens County jail in Georgia, awaiting extradition on two counts of first-degree murder with a firearm and one count of attempted first-degree murder with a firearm.
The deceased are Christopher Liszak, 49, and Chandler Dill, 32. Police have not released the name or other information about the wounded male, who was taken to Delray Medical Center with life-threatening injuries, because he is a witness to what happened. He has since been released from the hospital.
Moss, Liszak and Dill have criminal histories.
Moss was charged in U.S. District Court in April 2022 with possession of fentanyl. He became a target of an investigation by federal and Palm Beach County law enforcement agents after the overdose death of a 26-year-old Lake Worth Beach woman, who they believed was one of Moss’s customers, court records show.
Moss sold undercover agents two packages of what later tested positive as fentanyl for $1,400. While another purchase was planned, Moss fled, records show. When agents tracked him to a parking lot in West Palm Beach, they searched his car.
They didn’t find any drugs, but did find a 9-millimeter pistol. During an interview with agents, Moss was candid, according to court records. “Moss told law enforcement he is a drug addict and sells drugs when he is able to get his hands on them,” agents said.
In November 2022, he pleaded guilty to a charge of distribution of fentanyl and was given two years of probation.
Liszak was a fugitive from the Florida Department of Corrections for failing to show up for a court-ordered drug offender probation program, according to the prison system’s website. A Broward County judge in April issued a warrant for his arrest for violating his 2023 probation on charges of possession of methamphetamine and possession of cocaine.
Liszak served time in state prison. He was sentenced to five years in 2010 after being convicted in Broward County of heroin trafficking, selling opioids and grand theft. He was released in May 2014.
Unlike Moss and Liszak, Dill had not faced drug charges.
In 2021, when she was living in Tamarac, she was twice charged with grand theft auto after police said she stole cars from people pumping gas at service stations. She was found guilty of both charges in 2023 and was sentenced to the 364 days she had already served in the county jail.
Shots fired at hotel
Dill and Liszak had adjoining rooms at 365 Ocean on the day of their deaths; Dill had rented Room 101 the day before, while Liszak had checked into Room 102 on Sept. 9, according to the police report.
The following narrative is based on information from police, which they pulled together from their investigation, witness statements, interviews with hotel staff, and surveillance video at the hotel. It begins with Moss and Dill exiting her room.
“It appears they had an argument, and Moss fled the room carrying the victim’s purse,” Miuccio said. “[Dill] ran after him and yelled at him, give her purse back. She argued with him by the silver, four-door Jaguar and tried pulling her purse out of his arms.”
Dill had rushed out of the room wearing only a black tank top, trying to recover her black, Juicy Couture purse. As Moss tried to get into the Jaguar, the unidentified male victim came over to intervene. That’s when Moss got out of the driver’s seat and got something from the backseat, while the man ran to a truck and removed a small bag.
At this point, Liszak also exited his room and came over, apparently to intervene.
“The male victim returned from the truck, opened the passenger side door of the Jaguar, and, after seeing Moss, quickly moved and took cover towards the rear of the vehicle,” Miuccio said.
Moss got out of his car and fired at the man, then turned his 9mm pistol and shot Dill and Liszak at close range. Dill was shot in the neck, forearm and upper back, Liszak in the chest.
The other man ducked along the passenger side of the Jaguar and started moving away. Moss pointed the gun at him over the roof of the car and shot again; the man fell and attempted to crawl toward the hotel. He stopped at the hedges in front of Liszak’s room and got into a seated position.
Moss ran across the parking lot to him. As the man raised his empty hands over his head, Moss shot him again before fleeing the scene. The man was shot in the buttocks, thigh and scrotum.
Boca Raton police closed A1A to traffic for several hours during their investigation into the shootings. Larry Barszewski/The Coastal Star
Investigative work pays off
Police made quick progress when they arrived. They matched witness statements with available hotel surveillance video, from which they were able to pull the car’s license tag number. They determined the car was owned by Moss, that he was their suspect, and that he had left the city.
They got a search warrant for his Boynton Beach residence, where his fiancée told police that “at 5:30 p.m. he had returned home, packed a bag, and said he was headed for Jacksonville for work,” Miuccio said.
Police were able to determine Moss was heading to Georgia and notified Georgia State Police. A Laurens County deputy spotted the Jaguar around 5:20 a.m. Sept. 21, conducted a traffic stop and took Moss into custody without incident.
Miuccio, too, called the shootings an isolated incident. “We’re fortunate to be in a city with a low incidence of crime. There’s been a continued decrease in violent crime in the last five years,” she said.
The 2020 murder
September’s double homicide has one coincidence with the 2020 murder at the One Ocean Plaza garage at 1 S. Ocean Blvd., which was four blocks from 365 Ocean. The suspects in the two cases, Moss and Jared Noiman, were born one day apart in 1994.
The 2020 case isn’t over yet. Noiman had been ruled incompetent to stand trial in the death of his father, Jay Noiman, 59. That changed in July, when Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Donald Hafele found Jared Noiman, now 30, competent to stand trial. That ruling followed a report by the Florida Department of Children and Families that found him competent and that he no longer met the criteria for involuntary commitment.
A May trial has been scheduled.
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