14-year-old charged as an adult in murder of Deerfield Beach teen

A 14-year-old boy has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Rickey Ferguson Jr., a 16-year-old student and football player at Deerfield Beach High School.

A grand jury indicted Keantae Vaughn, a ninth-grader at Andrews High School in Pompano Beach, as an adult on Wednesday. Vaughn was arrested Dec. 30 and has been moved from the juvenile detention facility into the Broward Sheriff’s Office’s Paul Rein Detention Facility.

The South Florida Sun Sentinel is identifying Vaugh because he has been charged as an adult. The maximum possible penalty is life in prison.

Ferguson Jr. was playing football with several others at Westside Park in the 400 block of Southwest Second Street in Deerfield Beach shortly before 5 p.m. Dec. 28. A surveillance camera showed Ferguson Jr. talking to people sitting on the benches, according to a probable cause affidavit.

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The video showed someone standing nearby wearing a white shirt with a large logo on the front and dark pants with white stripes. The person, later identified as Vaughn, walked around Ferguson Jr. several times, seconds before the teenager was shot and fell to the ground, the affidavit said.

Vaughn ran after the shooting. Surveillance videos from the area show him jumping over a fence and meeting up with two other males, the affidavit said.

Ferguson Jr. was shot in the head and taken to the intensive care unit at Broward Health North where he was intubated. His mother told detectives she could think of no reason why her son would have been shot, the affidavit said.

His mother announced in a Facebook post on Jan. 3 that Ferguson Jr. died.

The night of the shooting, Vaughn’s mother contacted a sergeant and said she would bring her son to the Deerfield Beach station, the affidavit said. Vaughn, with his mother and father in the room, told detectives he was on the sidelines at the football field, watching the others play, and heard a gunshot.

Ferguson Jr.’s friend who witnessed the shooting told detectives he went to the park to play football with his friend. Other kids jumped a fence and came to the benches where he and Ferguson Jr. were sitting, the affidavit said.

The kids who came over the fence were playing with a gun and went behind Ferguson Jr., and Vaughn stole Ferguson Jr.’s hat, the affidavit said. Ferguson Jr. chased them to try to get his hat, and people at the field told the person with the gun, later identified as Vaughn, to stop playing with it.

He waved it around and pointed it at Ferguson Jr., the affidavit said. The witness identified Vaughn in a juvenile booking photo and said he was “100 percent sure” he was the shooter, who he knew as “Tae.” The witness said Ferguson Jr. and Vaughn knew each other before the shooting and Vaughn “disliked” Ferguson Jr.

The witness said he initially thought the shooting was an accident “but was being told that Keantae Vaughn was given the gun to shoot the victim,” the affidavit said.

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Vaughn was placed in diversion programs for juvenile offenses in 2022, according to the affidavit. The affidavit noted that his “grades, attendance and behavior” at Andrews High School “need improvement.”

“After considering all of the available facts, evidence, and circumstances, Broward State Attorney Harold F. Pryor and a panel of senior prosecutors decided the only responsible course of action was to file criminal charges in the adult system,” Broward State Attorney’s Office Executive Legal Assistant Aaron Savitski said in an email Friday.