Violence leaves three dead, one hurt at Black College Reunion

The Associated Press In an unrelated incident Sunday, police traded shots with a gunman on a street in the town crowded with young people visiting this beach community for the event. The gunman was killed and four officers and two bystanders were injured. The victims of Friday's incidents were beaten with baseball bats and stabbed with a knife after three men returned to a beach resort with friends to resume an earlier fight, according to Lt. Wade Kirby, a detective with New Smyrna Beach police. Killed were Kevans Bradshaw Hall II, 23, and Matthew Wichita, 21, both of Columbia, Md. Seth Qubeck, 21, also of Columbia, was listed in serious but stable condition in the intensive care unit at Halifax Medical Center in Daytona Beach. Police said he had 17 stab wounds. Police said that the victims were students at Howard Community College in Columbia, Md., but college officials said none were currently enrolled. Hall, however, was a former part-time student at the school. The three were apparently in Florida for Black College Reunion, an annual spring break function in Daytona Beach, a city of 180,000 on Florida's east coast. The event attracts about 100,000 visitors a year. Hall was black, as is Qubeck. Wichita was white. Kirby said three local men -- Neil Kirkland, 20, of Edgewater; Daniel Osborne, 19, of Edgewater; and Joshua Trull, 17, of New Smyrna Beach -- went to the Ocean Palms resort late Thursday afternoon to retrieve a ring Kirkland gave to a woman he met the night before. When the men became aggressive with her, the Maryland men stepped in to help her and a fight started, Kirby said. Police were called, but no one was arrested. Instead police gave out applications to file battery charges with the state attorney's office, Kirby said. Kirkland, Osborne and Trull went home, rounded up friends and returned to the resort with bats and knives, Kirby said. Police made four arrests and are searching for as many as three other suspects. Trull's brother, Jonathan Edward Trull, 27, of New Smyrna Beach, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Joshua Trull, a student at New Smyrna High School, was charged with being a principal to first-degree murder, Kirkland was charged with aggravated battery and Osborne was charged with being a principal to second-degree murder. Kirkland and Osborne are Daytona Beach Community College students, Kirby said. A third brother, Chris Trull, in his mid-20s, was still being sought. Kirby said two other men may have taken part in the attack. The stabbings were the first of two violent incidents to mar the weekend. Sunday's shootings occurred outside a restaurant in an area jammed with people coming out of nightspots on one of Daytona Beach's busiest weekends of the year. Two officers were escorting the man off the street when he shot them both in the chest, police spokesperson Clem Malek said. Both officers were wearing bulletproof vests. In the exchange of gunfire, two other officers also were shot. Two bystanders were injured, one by flying glass and one by either glass or bullet fragments. The reunion weekend had been expected to attract more than 75,000 visitors, but city officials estimated the crowds had grown to 110,000, partly due to bad weather at the competing Freaknik weekend in Atlanta.

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