By: Shawn Vincent

On Black Friday, November 23, 2012, Michael Dunn, a 45-year-old software developer, and his fiancée, Rhonda Rouer, stopped at a convenience store off in Jacksonville just after 7:30 in the evening. They had just attended a wedding, and Rouer wanted a snack before they returned to their hotel. As Dunn pulled into the parking lot, he heard loud music coming from a red Dodge Durango SUV parked in front of the store. 

Dunn pulled into the space immediately adjacent to the Durango, parking so close that the front passenger, Tevin Thompson, testified he couldn’t have opened his door. The Durango held four young men: Thompson in the front passenger seat, Tommy Stornes driving, Leland Brunson in the rear passenger seat, and seventeen-year-old Jordan Davis in the rear seat directly beside Dunn’s car. The young men had spent the evening at a mall, “girl shopping,” and had stopped at the store for gum and cigarettes.

Rouer went inside for a bottle of wine and a bag of chips. While she was gone, Dunn asked Thompson to turn down the music. Thompson complied, but Jordan Davis objected. Davis told Thompson to turn it back up, and then launched into a profanity-laced verbal assault directed at Dunn. Thompson tried to raise Davis’s window to defuse the situation. Dunn responded by lowering his own window. “Are you talking to me?” he said.

What happened in the next sixty seconds is disputed. Dunn testified at trial that Davis reached under his seat, produced what appeared to be the barrel of a shotgun, slammed it against the car door, and began to exit the vehicle. Dunn claims Davis said “This is going down” and uttered threats, including “I should kill that mother—” and “You’re dead.” Dunn said he responded: “You’re not going to kill me, you son of a bitch.” No other witness heard those words or saw Davis produce any weapon. No witness saw Davis attempt to exit the Durango. No shotgun or weapon resembling one was ever recovered from the vehicle.

Dunn reached across the passenger seat, opened the glove compartment, removed his 9mm pistol from its holster, racked a round into the chamber, and fired. He fired three shots in rapid succession into the rear passenger door of the Durango. Two bullets struck Jordan Davis in the leg. A third entered his abdomen, tearing through his ribs, diaphragm, liver, aorta, and lungs. Davis was dying.

Stornes threw the Durango into reverse and began backing out. Dunn fired a second burst, hitting the front passenger door as the vehicle retreated. Then there was a pause. Dunn exited his car, took a knee—what one witness later called a “police position”—and fired a third burst at the Durango as it sped out of the parking lot and around the corner into an adjacent lot. 

Rouer ran out of the store when she heard the shots. Dun frantically waved for her to get in the car. As they drove away, a witness named Shawn Atkins memorized Dunn’s license plate and gave it to the cashier.

Meanwhile, Stornes drove to an adjacent parking lot. He and Thompson got out to check on Davis, who was gasping for air in the back seat, bleeding rapidly from the wound to his aorta. After roughly ninety seconds, they rushed back to the convenience store and asked bystanders to call for help, but it was too late. Jordan Davis bled to death. 

At the hotel, Dunn and Rouer walked their dog. They ordered pizza. Dunn mixed a rum and Coke. He failed to call 9-1-1. Sometime overnight, he checked the news on and discovered someone had died. Despite this, they left Jacksonville early the next morning and drove south to their home in Satellite Beach — two and a half hours away — without contacting police. 

Detectives from Jacksonville traced the license plate to Dunn’s address in Satellite Beach. Believing he would be able to explain himself and that the shooting had been clearly justified, Dunn agreed to a recorded interview with investigators—without an attorney present. He answered detailed questions about the confrontation, his perceived threat, and his actions in the hours after the shooting. As the interview progressed and it became clear that no weapon had been found in the Durango and that no witness corroborated his account of events, Dunn began to grasp the severity of his situation.

Prosecutors charged Dunn with first-degree murder for the killing of Jordan Davis, three counts of first-degree attempted murder for the shots fired at the other passengers, and a charge of firing deadly missiles for the rounds he fired at the retreating vehicle. At his first trial, the jury deadlocked on the murder charge, prompting a mistrial on the key count— but they unanimously found Dunn guilty of all three attempted murder counts. The mandatory minimums for those convictions would have sent him to prison for at least sixty years. The state retried Dunn on the murder charge alone. The second jury deliberated briefly and returned a guilty verdict. The judge sentenced Michael Dunn to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

 

Lessons for Armed Defenders

 

Don’t get emotionally hijacked (Lesson #8)

There is a fine line between fear and anger, and in a self-defense case, that line is everything. Dunn told investigators he had said, “You’re not going to kill me, you son of a bitch”—a statement that conveys fear. But a witness testified that Dunn actually said, “You’re not going to talk to me like that”—a statement that conveys anger, not fear. The prosecution argued that Jordan Davis disrespected Dunn and Dunn shot him as a matter of wounded pride. The second jury agreed. Prosecutors portrayed the shooting not as a terrified man defending himself from a weapon-wielding attacker, but as an affronted man who decided he would not be spoken to that way. The moment anger becomes the primary driver of the use of deadly force, the legal justification for that force begins to dissolve.

 

Don’t provoke a potential aggressor (Lesson #11)

The very first witness prosecutors called at Dunn’s first trial was a man who had also heard the loud music when he pulled into the same convenience store parking lot. He chose not to park next to the Durango. He found a spot several spaces away. Dunn had the same choice. Despite complaining about the “thug music,” he parked directly beside the SUV—so close that the front passenger said he wouldn’t have been able to open his door. The prosecution argued this proximity invited the confrontation that followed. While Dunn was within his legal rights to park where he chose and to ask the teenagers to lower their music, neither action was necessary, and both set the stage for an escalation that ended with a teenager dead. When you are armed, you carry an extra responsibility to avoid situations that could lead to a deadly confrontation.

 

Don’t start needless arguments (Lesson #12)

After asking the teens to lower the music and receiving a profanity-laced response from Jordan Davis, Dunn had a clear opportunity to disengage. He could have looked away. He could have put the car in reverse and moved to a different parking spot. Instead, he rolled down his window and, in the words of criminal defense attorney Don West, “opted for engagement.” Dunn said, “Are you talking to me?” It was an invitation to continue the argument, not end it. Notably, one of the teenagers, Tevin Thompson, was simultaneously trying to raise the car window to stop the confrontation. One party was trying to de-escalate; the other was doubling down. Don West says concealed carriers “may not have an extra legal duty to avoid verbal confrontations, but they may have an extra responsibility to themselves and others so that there is no introduction of a gun into an argument—unless it is solely and specifically for the purpose of saving their own life.”

 

The belief of imminent harm must be reasonable (Lesson #5)

Dunn claimed that Jordan Davis produced a shotgun, opened his door, and threatened to kill him. No shotgun was ever found. No witness corroborated the claim that Davis attempted to exit the vehicle. The forensic evidence regarding whether the rear passenger door was open or closed was disputed. The only evidence supporting Dunn’s claim was Dunn himself. Don West notes that for a self-defense claim, it did not necessarily matter whether there actually was a shotgun—what mattered was whether a jury believed Dunn thought there was one. The first jury deadlocked, but the second jury convicted swiftly, finding Dunn’s claimed fear objectively unreasonable in the absence of any corroborating evidence.

 

Don’t shoot BEFORE the threat is imminent (Lesson #6)

For deadly force to be legally justified, the aggressor must have the ability, opportunity, and intent to cause serious harm—and that threat must be imminent, meaning it is unfolding right now. Dunn claimed Davis produced a shotgun and was beginning to exit the vehicle when he fired. But no witness saw Davis get out of the Durango, no weapon was ever recovered, and the forensic evidence on whether the door was even open was inconclusive. To ready his weapon, Dunn had to reach across the passenger seat, open the glove box, unsnap the holster, draw the pistol, rack a round, aim, and fire. With each of those steps, prosecutors argued, Dunn had time to reflect, and that undermined Dunn’s claim that the threat was truly imminen. If Davis was still seated in a vehicle with the door potentially closed, and the only “weapon” was something Dunn says he glimpsed briefly, a credible argument exists that the threat had not yet risen to the level of imminence that justifies deadly force. Dunn himself later conceded to investigators that he should have put the car in reverse. Dunn’s admission that flight was an option he recognized but didn’t take cut against his claim that there was no time to do anything other than shoot.

 

Don’t shoot after the threat is over (Lesson #7)

The interior surveillance cameras at the convenience store captured the audio of the shooting: ten shots in three bursts. The first two bursts came in rapid succession. Then there was a pause—enough time for Dunn to exit his vehicle, take a knee, and assume what a witness described as a “police position.” Then came the third burst, fired as the Durango sped out of the parking lot in reverse. Prosecutors told the jury that the pause between the second and third bursts proved Dunn had “time to reflect” before firing the final rounds. The jury that couldn’t decide the murder charge rendered a unanimous verdict for the attempted murder charges. Even if the first burst of fire might have been justifiable, continuing to fire at a fleeing vehicle forfeited Dunn’s self-defense claim for those rounds.

 

Call 9-1-1 (Lesson #30)

After the shooting, Dunn fled the scene and drove back to the hotel. He walked his dog. He ordered a pizza. He mixed a rum and Coke. He did not call 9-1-1. Overnight, he learned from the news that someone had died. In the morning, he drove two and a half hours south to their home in Satellite Beach—still without contacting police. Don West says the failure to self-report a shooting and flee the scene can constitute consciousness of guilt evidence. A person who genuinely believed they had acted in justified self-defense would be expected to call 911, remain at the scene, claim self-defense, and cooperate with police. Dunn did none of these things.

 

Don’t give in-depth statements to police (Lesson #31)

When detectives located Dunn at his home in Satellite Beach and asked him to come outside, he complied, and then submitted to a lengthy recorded interrogation without the advice of an attorney. Dunn believed he was justified, and he felt that talking to investigators would clear things up. It did not. Prosecutors played the entire recorded interview at trial, and jurors watched Dunn dig a deeper and deeper hole as he made claims unsupported by any physical evidence or eyewitness. Midway through the interview, one detective told Dunn that while some self-defense cases are clear-cut, “this ain’t one of them.” Don West says Dunn “tried to talk himself out of it without counsel.”

 

Avoid the fight (Lesson #36)

Don West said it clearly: the Dunn case provides a “list of how not to act” as a concealed carrier. Had Dunn parked in any other spot in the parking lot, Jordan Davis would be alive, and Dunn would be free. Every subsequent bad decision—engaging the teens, rolling down his window, continuing to fire as the Durango retreated, fleeing the scene, talking to police without a lawyer—they all flowed from that first, decision to park next to the Red Durango with the loud music.