A 15-year-old boy never made it home after a night of playing basketball devolved into crime, then a shooting on the sidewalk of a busy main road in Miramar.
Nearly two years later, two people now face charges in connection with the March 2023 murder of Joel Vilsaint.
De Sean Phang, 28, of Miramar, was arrested Tuesday by federal authorities in Colorado after a high-speed chase, according to the U.S. Marshals Service. Miramar Police had arrested Juliean Sellmon, 26, of Miami-Dade County, one month after the shooting.
Authorities issued an arrest warrant for Phang on Jan. 17 for second-degree murder with a firearm, the U.S. Marshals Service District of Colorado said in a news release Wednesday. Miramar officers recently learned that Phang may have fled to Colorado.
Phang was found driving a rental car Tuesday near Colorado Springs. Officers pursued him until he stopped in the parking lot of a store. He was arrested and was being held in a Colorado Springs jail, waiting to be extradited to Broward County, the Marshals Service said.
The Marshals Service and Miramar Police in a statement Thursday did not provide further information about Phang’s alleged involvement in the 2023 murder of Vilsaint. Vilsaint is not named in the affidavit for Sellmon’s arrest, but Miramar Police identified him as the victim in a statement Thursday.
On March 21, 2023, Vilsaint was with a group of kids playing basketball at Ansin Sports Complex until about 9 p.m., according to a probable cause affidavit for Sellmon’s arrest. After playing, they walked through the adjacent El-Ad Residences At Miramar apartment complex in the 2400 block of East Preserve Way, and Vilsaint said he wanted to go “hitting,” slang for trying to open unlocked cars and break into them.
One of the people who was with Vilsaint that night told police that the boy was able to get into a blue BMW that was parked in the complex, according to the affidavit. It was Sellmon’s car.
Surveillance video in the area showed Vilsaint and another person get into the BMW briefly, but they got out and ran to the front of the apartment complex, the affidavit said. Sellmon was not yet there at the time.
But about 20 minutes later the children returned, got back into the BMW and again ran away. This time, Sellmon and his girlfriend had just arrived minutes earlier at the complex in his girlfriend’s car and parked in the lot down from the BMW, according to the affidavit.
His girlfriend told police that Sellmon grabbed his gun from her car and said his BMW was being “robbed into.” The couple drove around looking for anyone “suspicious,” the affidavit said, but they found nothing and returned to the parked BMW.
An unidentified man in a black Lexus SUV had also arrived there and met up with them. He is not named in the warrant for Sellmon’s arrest.
It was Sellmon’s girlfriend who not long later saw the group of boys standing on a sidewalk in the 1800 block of South Hiatus Road while driving to a nearby Publix, according to the affidavit. She called Sellmon to tell them where they were.
Both the BMW and the black Lexus were seen on cameras driving to the front of the apartment complex about 9:40 p.m. Two minutes later, Vilsaint was seen running into bushes near the sidewalk as a man in a white shirt, later identified as Sellmon, chased after him, according to the affidavit. As the group of kids ran in different directions in the area, two gunshots rang out.
Some of the group made it home. Vilsaint wasn’t found for hours, until someone called 911 about a person lying bloodied on the sidewalk, the affidavit said.
Vilsaint’s sister reported him missing on March 23, the affidavit said, unaware he had been at Memorial Regional Hospital for 24 hours by then as officers initially could not identify him. He was pronounced dead in the hospital on March 27.
Sellmon is facing one count of second-degree murder and has pleaded not guilty, court records show. He has been held in the Main Jail since his arrest in April 2023.
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