BARTOW, Fla. (Court TV) — Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for a man accused of gunning down three friends who were going fishing.
Tony Wiggins appears in court on Sept. 14, 2026. (Court TV)
Tony Lee “TJ” Wiggins Jr., 32, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder, tampering with physical evidence and possessing a weapon as a felon. Prosecutors said Wiggins was the gunman who killed Damion Tillman, Brandon Rollins and Keven Springfield outside a Dollar General in 2020.
In his opening statement to the jury on Monday, Assistant State Attorney Ralph Guerra said Tillman went into the discount store on July 17, 2020, to buy a few items before heading out with his friends to go fishing. Guerra said surveillance video showed the defendant inside the store at the same time as Tillman. After Tillman exited, the defendant followed. Minutes later, the three victims were dead. Guerra said the three men were shot nine times and investigators collected 10 fired cartridge casings identified as TulAmmo 9 mm bullets.
The three men were connected by a truck Wiggins owned that “came into the possession” of Springfield, Guerra said. After the shooting, investigators found Wiggins’ truck without an engine inside. A closer examination of the trucks the victims had been driving revealed that the engine from Wiggins’ truck had been placed into Tillman’s red Chevrolet truck.
Evidence against Wiggins includes a Facebook message from Wiggins to his mother saying he planned to get a Smith & Wesson 9 mm firearm. Eight days before the three friends were killed, surveillance video showed Wiggins and his girlfriend at a store purchasing 9 mm TulAmmo ammunition, Guerra said.
When investigators interviewed Wiggins, he said that he had been in a car with his brother and girlfriend, but denied any role in the shootings. Wiggins’ brother, William “Robert” Wiggins, was also arrested. In an interview with detectives, William Wiggins allegedly said that he watched his brother shoot all three victims after accusing Springfield of stealing his truck.
After the shooting, the brothers and Tony Wiggins’ girlfriend drove to McDonald’s, where they ordered 10 double cheeseburgers and two McChicken sandwiches, investigators said.
Tony Wiggins’ attorney, Debra Tuomey, urged the jury to question the results of the “messy, reckless, sloppy” investigation. “A homicide investigation requires the utmost of care, just like any criminal investigation does and should,” she said. “But especially seasoned homicide detectives, crime scene investigators, should be doing their absolute best to follow procedure, follow the policies; and I suspect what the evidence is going to show you is that these policies and procedures that have been instituted by their own agency and really just by experience and common sense, were either broken or simply not followed for whatever reason.”
Guerra told the jury that the evidence would show that Tony Wiggins’ DNA was on the cartridge casings found at the scene. Tuomey asked the jury to “abandon all your thoughts, your feelings, your preconceived notions about the scientific reliability of forensic science,” and to question the evidence-handling process at every step.
Tony Wiggins’ girlfriend, Mary Whittemore, pleaded guilty to three charges of accessory after the fact and was sentenced to four years in prison. William Wiggins pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact and tampering with evidence; court records indicate he has not yet been sentenced.
