Advertisement

Police make second arrest in shooting of two Tampa sisters

Vakarvery Scott, 20, faces second degree murder and aggravated assault charges in connection to the Dec. 1 shooting that left Savannah Mathis dead and her younger sister injured.
 
A memorial for 21-year-old Savannah Mathis at BJs Alabama BBQ, her family’s restaurant.
A memorial for 21-year-old Savannah Mathis at BJs Alabama BBQ, her family’s restaurant. [ IVY CEBALLO | Times ]
Published Dec. 23, 2021|Updated Dec. 24, 2021

TAMPA — Authorities have made a second arrest in a shooting earlier this month that killed a woman and injured her sister.

Vakarvery Scott, 20, was arrested Wednesday in connection to the Dec. 1 shooting of 21-year-old Savannah Mathis and her 19-year-old sister.

Police found the women in their bullet-ridden car about 8 p.m. on Dec. 1 near Grace Street and Delaware Avenue. Mathis had crashed into a wall after being shot in the head and abdomen. Her sister was shot in the leg.

On the night of the shooting, police arrested 29-year-old Alfonso Evans on a charge of shooting into an occupied vehicle. An arrest affidavit for Evans said he was found about 20 minutes after the shooting in an alley with a gun in his waistband and told police he had fired “warning shots.”

More details about led up to the shooting have not been released. An arrest report for Scott was not yet available.

Vakarvery Scott, 20, was arrested on Dec. 22, 2021 on charges of second degree murder with a firearm, aggravated assault with a firearm and shooting into a vehicle in connection the Dec. 1 death of Savannah Mathis. Savannah's sister was also shot but survived. [ Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office ]

Police said detectives worked with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to connect forensic evidence with the suspects. Detectives got a warrant for Scott’s arrest on charges of second-degree murder, aggravated assault with a firearm and shooting into an occupied vehicle. He was being held in the Hillsborough County jail Thursday on $532,000 bail. Jail records list his address in Seffner.

Savannah Mathis was a student at Hillsborough Community College and had plans to finish her nursing degree at the University of Florida, her family and friends told the Tampa Bay Times after the shooting. She left behind a network of extended family at BJ’s Alabama BBQ on South Dale Mabry Highway, where she also worked. Her family has said they believe she and her sister were in the wrong place at the wrong time when they were shot.

For the week after Mathis died, BJ’s Alabama BBQ closed and set up a makeshift memorial on a table in her memory. A gofundme.com page has raised more than $7,000 in her honor for multiple purposes, including gun violence prevention.

“I’ve gotten used to having to deliver bad news to parents, but I never in a million years thought it would have been us,” her aunt, Brandy Williams, who worked in law enforcement in Alabama and with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, told the Times. “And to think that we could have lost both of them. They’re supposed to bury us. We’re not supposed to bury them.”