Florida detectives said Saturday they were investigating the deaths of three close friends who drove to a lake at night to go catfishing and were beaten and shot.
It happened Friday night around 10 p.m. on Lake Streety in Frostproof.
“This is a horrific scene,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd told reporters from the scene Saturday morning. “I’ve been to a lot of murder scenes and this ranked among the worst I’ve been to.”
Judd identified the victims as Damion Tillman, 23; Keven Springfield, 30, and Brandon Rollins, 27, all of Frostproof, and said they had been “massacred.”
He said the fishing spot was “as far out in the woods as you can get.”
The victims were attacked as they arrived at the scene within minutes of each other in two pickups, authorities said.
Judd said detectives were summoned to the scene by the father of Rollins who said he was asleep when his son called and said “help.”
He knew where his son was and arrived there in 10 minutes, the sheriff said. When he got there, he found his son barely alive, and Tillman and Springfield dead
Judd said the father called 911 from a gas station, having left behind his cellphone when he rushed out of the house after getting his son’s call.
The sheriff said the son was able to speak to the father but the things he told him “we’re not releasing at this time.”
He said Rollins died before paramedics arrived.
In response to one reporter’s question, Judd said it was too early to say if the victims knew the killers “but our intuitiveness tells us you just don’t stumble upon somebody out here.
