West Palm Beach police found Jared Auer’s body during the early hours of June 15 in a vehicle parked along Old Okeechobee Road two blocks northwest of the City Food Hall Grandview.
Almost two months later, they have arrested a Loxahatchee man in his murder, saying he shot Auer in the head during an attempted robbery outside a nightclub, then drove away on a motorcycle before the sun rose that Father’s Day morning.
Officers took William Andrew Dunkley into custody on Aug. 8 on one count each of capital felony murder and attempted robbery with a firearm.
During a hearing Aug. 9 at the Palm Beach County Jail, Circuit Judge Karen Miller ordered that Dunkley, 43, be held without bail. An attorney who attended the hearing on Dunkley’s behalf declined comment.
Police: Fatal West Palm shooting may have started as robbery attempt
According to Dunkley’s arrest report, officers found Auer unresponsive in the vehicle, whose make and year the report does not specify, shortly before 4 a.m. on the 1200 block of Old Okeechobee Road. An ambulance took him to St. Mary’s Medical Center. An online obituary indicates that Auer died the following day.
Investigators recovered a dashboard camera from Auer’s car and reviewed the video footage recorded just prior to the fatal shooting. Investigators also reviewed video-surveillance footage from businesses on Old Okeechobee, an industrial area about a mile southwest of CityPlace.
The videos reportedly showed three men approaching the vehicle. One spoke briefly with Auer, the report said. One reportedly then opened the vehicle’s driver door and, with the help of another of the men, struggled briefly with Auer.
Auer attempted to reverse the vehicle and flee the scene, but one of the three men shot him, according to the arrest report.
After the shooting, the men ran to the parking lot of a nearby nightclub. The suspected shooter climbed onto a motorcycle, placed a handgun in the vehicle’s storage compartment and drove off, police said.
Police: Gun, clothing found at home tied man to West Palm fatal shooting
License-plate readers placed a Harley Davidson motorcycle in the vicinity of Old Okeechobee a few hours before the shooting. Investigators learned Dunkley was its registered owner.
On June 26, officers obtained a warrant to search Dunkley’s home in Loxahatchee. They found a .40-caliber handgun concealed in a gun safe in Dunkley’s bedroom, as well as a loaded .40-caliber magazine and loose ammunition.
The sheriff’s Office crime lab report showed that a shell casing recovered from the crime scene matched the gun recovered from Dunkley’s home, the arrest report said. Also, investigators say they found at the residence a black leather vest and boots consistent with what one of the three men was wearing in the surveillance video.
The online obituary indicated Auer was born in Boynton Beach and grew up playing football in local youth leagues.
It remembered him as “a fantastic uncle — playful, caring, and endlessly present for his niece and nephew, who adored every playful moment with him.”
Julius Whigham II is a criminal justice and public safety reporter for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at jwhigham@pbpost.com and follow him on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, at @JuliusWhigham. Help support our work: Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Two months after Father’s Day fatal shooting, West Palm police arrest man on murder charge
Reporting by Julius Whigham II, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
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