Jury weighs Ruskin ice cream man murder case

TAMPA — Someone shot six men one early morning in 2010 on the front porch of a Ruskin home. Whether that person was Michael Keetley is a question that has dogged the local court system — and kept Keetley in jail — for the last 12 years.

On Friday, a jury once again began to consider an answer.

A panel of two women and 10 men began deliberating a little after 4 p.m., following three weeks of testimony and arguments.

Just before 9 p.m., they told Hillsborough Circuit Judge Christopher Sabella they wanted to continue deliberations Monday. The judge let them return home for the weekend.

A verdict would bookend Hillsborough County’s longest-running criminal case, and determine whether Keetley spends the rest of his life in prison or goes home to his family.

A different jury in 2020 was unable to decide. Court records indicated that they deadlocked 10-2 in favor of acquittal. A mistrial was declared.

Keetley, 52, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder and four counts of attempted murder in the shooting that occurred Thanksgiving morning 2010. It happened at a home on a short, narrow street called Ocean Mist Court in a working-class area of Ruskin.

In closing arguments Friday morning, Assistant State Attorney Michelle Doherty guided the jury through a conglomeration of evidence, including the words of people who knew Keetley, ballistic analysis and the memories of eyewitnesses.

“All of the evidence in this case points to one person,” Doherty said. “And that is the defendant seated right over there.”

But there were problems with the state’s evidence.

Defense attorney Richard Escobar, in his own closing argument, acknowledged the pain the crime caused to the victims and their families, describing what happened as a nightmare.

“This investigation that followed was nothing short of a nightmare itself,” Escobar said. “This case was made of rumors, filled with errors, mistakes, incompetence, assumptions, contaminations, leading to total desperation to salvage the arrest of Michael Keetley.”

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The survivors would tell of a man who pulled up about 2:30 a.m. in a dark minivan as the group played cards, drank and smoked on the front porch. The driver got out carrying what was variously described as a pump-action shotgun or rifle, and wearing a shirt that read “sheriff.”

He asked for a man named “Creeper.” The men knew someone who went by that name, but he lived a few houses down. They told the gunman to leave. He asked for their identification and ordered them to kneel down. Then, he began to shoot them.

Juan and Sergio Guitron, brothers known as “Magic” and “Spider,” both died. Severely wounded were Gonzalo Guevara, Daniel Beltran, Richard Cantu and Ramon Galan.

The shooter got back in his van and drove off. The survivors initially couldn’t name their attacker. But within days, word spread in the close-knit community that it was Keetley.

He was a familiar face in the neighborhoods of southeast Hillsborough County, dispensing frozen treats from his purple ice cream truck.

Months before he was a suspect, Keetley was a victim. Flagged down one evening in Ruskin by a woman he thought was a customer, he was accosted by two armed, masked men. They stole $12, and shot Keetley in his leg, chest, left hand and right arm.

He endured months of surgeries and physical therapy as a Sheriff’s Office probe of the robbery lingered. Keetley became frustrated with what he saw as a lack of investigative progress. So, prosecutors said, he undertook his own investigation. He questioned people along his ice cream route. He wrote down license tags and names and addresses. He vented to acquaintances his desire for justice.

Although he’d described his attackers to investigators as Black, he came to believe they were actually Hispanic, prosecutors said. He became interested in one man in particular, who he’d heard had bragged about being involved in the shooting. The man was known as “Creeper.”

A computer that investigators seized from Keetley’s home held records of internet searches that included phrases like “creeper” and “ocean mist.” There were also searches related to guns.

At least three surviving witnesses were shown photo lineups in the days after the crime. One identified Keetley’s image as the gunman. Two did not.

In the trial, defense attorneys pointed out that detectives did not follow standard procedures in assembling the photo lineup packages. And the positive identification of Keetley occurred after word had spread among friends of the victims that the ice cream man was the one responsible.

Memories of what the gunman looked like were also inconsistent. One survivor said he was about 6 feet, 1 inch to 6 feet, 2 inches tall, weighed upward of 280 pounds and had brown or “orangish” hair. Another said he was 6-foot-1 and weighed between 170 and 180 pounds, with hair that looked dark blonde.

Keetley, when he was arrested, was 5-foot-11, and weighed 212 pounds.

It was dark that night, the only light a single porch bulb. The men had been drinking. Some had been smoking marijuana or doing cocaine. They said the shooting occurred in seconds.

There were also inconsistencies in the ballistic evidence. Several .45-caliber bullet shell casings from the murder scene were deemed likely to have been fired from a Glock handgun. Investigators would find a similar spent casing in a burn pit at Keetley’s parents’ multiacre property in Wimauma. They also found several projectiles that an analyst opined were consistent with having been fired from the murder weapon.

But the men said the shooter carried a shotgun. The state suggested the gun could have been modified with a replacement barrel, but the murder weapon was never found.

The defense argued that Keetley couldn’t have been the shooter because he was physically incapable of firing a gun. His injuries after being shot left him with nerve damage, which made it difficult for him to grip and maneuver objects with his right hand. He also walked with a limp, the defense argued, but none of the victims recalled the shooter moving with a limp.

Escobar, in his closing argument, said the investigative focus on Keetley failed to account for other possibilities.

He pointed in particular to gang activity in the neighborhood. Two weeks before the killings, sheriff’s officials took a report of a drive-by shooting at the same address.

He criticized investigators for not probing other leads.

“You follow every lead because in our system of justice we want to get the right person,” Escobar said. “We do not want to make mistakes.”