A man prosecutors say is a violent repeat offender will spend life in prison for a 2019 crime which included beating a woman in a carjacking incident and leading police on a chase in Rockledge.
At a March 30 hearing, Circuit Judge Charles Crawford sentenced Jermaine D. Morgan, 36, to life in state prison without parole. A Brevard County jury on March 26 found Morgan guilty of burglary with assault or battery, carjacking, robbery, and aggravating fleeing and eluding after running from Rockledge police.
DNA presented by the State Attorney’s Office indicated Morgan’s blood was left on the carjacking victim during the attack. A hat dropped by Morgan while fleeing from police contained additional DNA evidence. Eyewitnesses, including the victim, also positively identified Morgan as the attacker.
Over the past seven years Morgan has spent in the Brevard County jail, the State Attorney’s Office had refused to make a plea offer to Morgan to resolve the case, said Assistant State Attorney Elizabeth Garvey.
Instead, prosecutors “pursued the guilty verdict at trial plus an additional jury finding that Morgan was a “Prison Releasee Reoffender,” with that finding mandating a life sentence without parole, the State Attorney’s Office said in a release.
Carjacking followed police pursuit, crash
In March 2019, a Rockledge police officer responded to a report of a stolen vehicle at a gas station near Eyster and Fiske boulevards. When the officer approached a Mazda SUV occupied by Morgan and another man, the vehicle sped away, heading east.
The officer observed Morgan driving erratically, swerving between lanes and running a red light. The SUV blew a tire while turning north and was abandoned on U.S. 1 near Barton Boulevard.
The officer then watched as Morgan and the other man fled west on foot and approached a woman entering a black Ford Explorer outside a laundromat near Barton Boulevard. Investigators said the men pulled the woman out of the vehicle, stole her cellphone, beat her to the ground and took her keys before driving away in her truck.
The vehicle contained the woman’s nursing bag and medical supplies, police said.
During the following days, investigators linked Morgan to the abandoned Mazda and later located the stolen Explorer at an apartment complex. Inside one apartment, officers found Morgan’s codefendant along with the victim’s cellphone, stethoscope and personal paperwork bearing a family member’s name.
Before the incident in Rockledge, prosecutors said, Morgan had been free from a Virginia prison for two and a half months. He had served 10 years for child abuse and voluntary manslaughter for beating a 2-year-old child who died from his injuries.
The codefendant in the Rockledge case, 27-year-old Trayvon Jones, pleaded no contest to charges in 2024 and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Morgan still faces a charge of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
Tyler Vazquez is the Growth and Development Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Vazquez at 321-480-0854 or tvazquez@floridatoday.com. Twitter: @tyler_vazquez.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Man gets life sentence for violent 2019 carjacking, robbery in Rockledge
Reporting by Tyler Vazquez, Florida Today / Florida Today
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