Small town Mims not immune to violence

A third-generation Mims resident, Marshall Jefferson Jr. lives in the house his father built in East Mims, a neighborhood just off U.S. 1 and Main Street.

Mims, he said, is an old-fashioned, small, southern community where working families like his can thrive, but where the potential for violence can’t be removed.

“To me it doesn’t happen that frequently," he said. "I don’t recall a lot of murders right here, but I know it happens from time to time,” Jefferson said.

But even though the northernmost community in Brevard is remote and rural with just over 7,000 people, Mims has seen a few killings over the last two years.

Monday, a homicide victim was found in a burning car off Wiley Avenue — a man later identified as 38-year-old Tony Butler of Titusville. Sheriff's officials haven't arrested anyone in connection with the killing.

Six months ago, on New Year’s Day, a man killed his neighbor after a fight over fantasy football, according to law enforcement officials.

In February of last year, an 80-year-Mims man was killed by the man he’d hired to trim his trees after a possibly drug-related dispute. And in the Fall of 2016, deputies said a man killed a woman he had been traveling with before turning the gun on himself at a gas station just off Main Street.

"It's not something we normally see," Brevard County Sheriff's Office spokesman Tod Goodyear said. "But it's no different than anywhere else."  

He said it's not out of the ordinary to see a cluster of murders in a given area over a short amount of time. Sometimes a series of isolated incidents is just coincidence, he said.

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“Does it surprise me when (violence) happens? Not really," Jefferson said. "Most everybody here is good working people, but there’s a mix.”

Violent history  

Driving into Mims from the south along U.S. 1, the landscape shifts to subtropical overgrowth, expansive farmlands and old orange groves. 

Originally a citrus service village, it was named after early settler Casper Neil Mims who came to the area in 1876 and opened the first dry goods and grocery store in the community. It began to grow when the railroad came to town in 1885, according to floridabackroadstravel.com.

Mims is no stranger to violence, including murder, both of which are deeply embedded in its history.

The area is possibly best known as the home of civil rights activists Harry and Harriet Moore, and their murder. They died in their home when it was bombed Christmas night 1951. 

Their murders were never solved but believed to have been the work of the Ku Klux Klan, according to historians with the Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Cultural Complex.

The bombing is counted as a major event leading up to the Civil Rights Movement. The site of their home is now a museum and scenic park. 

'Needs to be cleaned up a little'

Marshall lives a few blocks over from the woods where Butler’s burned body was found in a car July 9. Those woods used to be the orange groves he grew up exploring with other neighborhood kids before they were overgrown.

One patch of the lush greenery that shades that part of the neighborhood is now a charred clearing where deputies and crime scene investigators removed the burned out car and the dead man inside earlier this week.

"It's a good neighborhood. It just needs to be cleaned up a little bit," said Martha Lopez, who moved to Mims from the Bronx four years ago. She came from New York City with her kids to escape the trappings of city life, but said she still sees drugs and crimes where she lives now. 

Mark Jackson, who grew up in Titusville and now works in Mims, said the killings that have occurred there feel like isolated incidents. Shocking, but the kind of thing that could happen everywhere, he said.

“It’s an oddity up there," Jackson said of Mims. "It doesn’t connect with Titusville. They ironically call Titusville busy and crime-plagued. They’ll come into Titusville and say we don’t have to lock our doors in Mims. We don’t have these problems in Mims." 

Contact Vazquez at tvazquez@floridatoday.com, 321-917-7491 or on Twitter @tyler_vazquez.