A man wanted in Florida on murder charges was shot dead on Thursday.
Randolph Almanto Coakley, 39, of Pinewood Gardens, was sitting in front of a home at Bartlett Street, Fox Hill, with two other men when a man emerged from a nearby dirt road and shot him, police said.
The other two men were not injured, according to police. Police said the shooter ran into a waiting gold Honda Accord and fled the scene.
Coakley was featured on America’s Most Wanted (AMW) last August as a person of interest in the unsolved 2002 murder of Marissa Karp.
Police believe that Coakley, whose street name was ‘Prodigal’, had information about Karp’s death.
On August 19, 2002, Karp’s body was found under an Alligator Alley bridge in Collier County. Her body had been placed in a garbage bag.
Coakley and Karp lived together in the same Broward apartment that officers believe she was shot and killed in, AMW host John Walsh said.
Her father, Gary Karp, told The Nassau Guardian yesterday that he was devastated by the news of Coakley’s death because he felt he knew who killed her.
Coakley was also wanted by police in Sunrise, Florida regarding the October 2002 murders of Cardwell Heastie, Calvin Russell and the attempted murder of Avaron Roberts, who was left paralyzed from his waist down.
According to reports in the Sun Sentinel, detectives believed that Heastie was the intended target and the other victims “were just at the wrong place at the wrong time”.
Coakley is the second suspect in that incident to be murdered. Ryan Wood was murdered in a drive-by shooting in Freeport, Grand Bahama, in December 2007.
By Artesia Davis
Guardian Senior Reporter
