TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A man convicted of fatally shooting a man and woman outside a Jacksonville bar as part of an attempted revenge killing has been scheduled for execution in Florida under a death warrant signed Friday by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, the eighth this year.
Michael Bernard Bell, 54, is set to die by lethal injection July 15 at Florida State Prison near the city of Starke.
Bell was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to death for the murders of Jimmy West and Tamecka Smith.
In December 1993, Bell spotted what he thought was the car of the man who fatally shot his brother earlier that year, according to court records. Bell was apparently unaware that the man had sold the car to West.
Bell called on two friends and armed himself with an AK-47 rifle, authorities said. They found the car parked outside a liquor lounge and waited. When West, Smith and another woman eventually exited the club, Bell approached the car and opened fire, officials said. West died at the scene, and Smith died on the way to the hospital. The other woman escaped injury. Witnesses said Bell also fired at a crowd of onlookers before fleeing the area. He was eventually arrested the next year.
Bell was later convicted of three additional murders. He fatally shot a woman and her toddler son in 1989, and he killed his mother’s boyfriend about four months before the attack on West and Smith, officials said.
Six other executions have taken place in Florida this year, with a seventh scheduled for June 24, all by lethal injection.