A Small Miracle For 10th Street
On December 17th Stuart PD participated in the annual “Miracle On 10th Street” celebration. They handed out toys to the East Stuart community kids. On Thursday December 22nd Stuart PD formally arrested Lonnie Bee Smalls III for the first-degree murder of senior citizen Mattie Lou Jones who was sitting in her living room on that same block of 10th Street on Thanksgiving evening when a stray bullet found her.
He was also charged with the attempted first-degree murders of three others which occurred at the same time. Two victims were shot and one escaped injury. Within an hour and half of the incident, Smalls was a suspect and was arrested on a violation of probation six hours after the incident. He was held in jail without bond.
The investigation is ongoing, and there will probably be more charges filed perhaps against Smalls but probably several others as well. I spoke with Chief Tumminelli this morning. He gave me no additional information than what was in his press release. I would suspect by reading between the lines of that press release, there are multiple law enforcement agencies involved not just Martin County’s. This can turn out to be a large, involved case.
Thanksgiving weekend saw a raft of shootings in the city…most of it outside of the East Stuart neighborhood. Most of them had to do with the perpetrator being mad at the victim and having access to a gun.
Age is no predictor of rage. Two senior citizens were shot and killed by another senior during a dispute in a condo. Another was shot by a high school student who unlocked his parent’s gun box and shot his friend. And a convicted felon shot someone at an apartment complex for a still undetermined reason on my part.
Smalls turned 19 while he was sitting in jail. He was born on Dec 10th 2003. He had been arrested and convicted of crimes numerous times. Lonnie Smalls couldn’t care less about taking a human life…even a grandma sitting in her living room watching tv. If convicted, he will likely face the death penalty but will, at the very least, spend the rest of his life in prison.
Within less than 2 hours, Tumminelli and the rest of the department knew who the culprit was and 6 hours later had him behind bars. It is obvious that they are on the job to serve and protect. Justice, in most cases, turns slowly and even with everything proceeding expeditiously in this case, it took a month to formally charge Smalls.
In his statement, the chief said that he hoped the arrest brings “some closure for the Jones family.” And if it does, that would be the small miracle on 10th Street. A real miracle would be if 10th Street stopped being a shooting gallery.
That miracle on 10th Street has more to do with what the people of that block, the rest of East Stuart, and all the citizens of Stuart are willing to tolerate. The present level of violence especially with guns should be unacceptable to our community.
