A Fort Myers man has been sentenced to life in prison for the second time after being found guilty for the 2003 shooting death of a deaf and mute woman.
Travis Fletcher, now 39, was arrested more than 20 years ago for shooting a woman six times, one of the bullets puncturing her heart.
Suzie Proctor was deaf and mute.
The crime took place October 7, 2003, when Fletcher was 16, the state attorney’s office said.
That day, Fletcher and a friend were walking down Wright Street in Fort Myers when Proctor drove up to them in a white van registered in her name. Fletcher’s friend told police that Fletcher and Proctor were passing notes “as if Proctor could not speak or hear,” police records state.
The two men got into her car and told her to drive down an alley where Fletcher and Proctor exited the car. A few moments later, several gun shots rang out.
A witness saw them all in the car together, too.
Proctor was on the ground bleeding.
Fletcher and his friend drove the van to Fletcher’s home where he changed his clothes.
The next day, Fletcher was hanging out with a few people at a home on Wright Street. One of the occupants of the home called 911 after she had overheard Fletcher telling people that he had shot the woman.
Officers from the Fort Myers Police Department responded to the home, where they found the victim’s van parked. In Fletcher’s pocket, they found the keys to the van.
On April 23, 2026, a Lee County circuit judge sentenced Fletcher to life in prison once again. He had already been sentenced to two concurrent life sentences for second-degree murder with a deadly weapon and carjacking.
Fletcher was resentenced in his adulthood is because in 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court “held that all children, 17 or younger, who were sentenced to life without parole, were entitled to a resentencing due to their age at the time of the crime,” the state attorney’s office said.
Less than 2 years after Fletcher committed the crime, he was sentenced to life in prison.
In 2014, after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling, a motion was filed to correct what an attorney referred to as an “illegal” sentence. The motion was denied.
More than 10 years passed before the courts ordered an investigation for Fletcher’s resentencing.
And just over a month after the investigation, on April 23, Lee County Circuit Judge Bruce Kyle re-imposed the original life sentence.
Fletcher will be entitled to a 25-year review following the resentencing.
Tayeba Hussein is a breaking news reporter for The News-Press & Naples Daily News. Reach her at thussein@usatodayco.com.
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This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Fort Myers man, then 16, resentenced in 2003murder of deaf woman
Reporting by Tayeba Hussein, Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News / Fort Myers News-Press
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