Three Men Indicted in Gang-Ordered Retribution Killing in Sanford

A Seminole County Grand Jury indicted three men on March 10 for what prosecutors described as a gang-ordered assassination of a man named Williams, killed in retaliation because his brother had testified against a fellow gang member in a 2025 murder trial.

Damarious Cofield, identified by investigators as the shooter, faces the death penalty. Moses Mitchell III, 30, and Jamarlon Green, 30, were each indicted for first-degree premeditated murder for helping Cofield plan and carry out the killing. The indictments of Cofield and Green also include enhanced charges for gang-related murder. Both men belong to a Sanford area street gang affiliated with a national Haitian-American criminal organization, according to the Office of the State Attorney for the 18th Judicial Circuit.

A witness told investigators that Williams was playing a dice game in the street with an acquaintance at about 2:30 p.m. when a man in a black hooded jacket and black ski mask emerged from nearby shrubs, walked toward them aggressively, and shot Williams four times with a handgun. Williams died from his wounds at a hospital shortly thereafter.

The investigation turned heavily on digital evidence. Detectives secured a search warrant for Mitchell's mobile phone, which revealed communication and coordination with Cofield in the period leading up to the murder. Subsequent warrants executed on Cofield's and Green's phones identified Cofield as the shooter. That same digital evidence showed Green had directed the killing and arranged for Cofield to collect a handgun at a home Green's family owned near the crime scene.

The motive, as alleged by the State Attorney's office, was retribution: Williams was the brother of a gang member who had taken the stand against another member during a 2025 murder trial in Seminole County. Prosecutors characterized the slaying as a gang-directed hit ordered to punish that act of testimony.

The charges mark a significant escalation in the accountability framework prosecutors are applying to gang-linked violence in the Sanford area. With Cofield facing a potential death sentence and all three defendants now indicted on first-degree premeditated murder charges, the case will move through the 18th Judicial Circuit courts as one of the most serious criminal proceedings in the county in recent years.