Palmetto man is found guilty of a deadly shooting — and then abusing the body
A Manatee County jury has convicted a 43-year-old Palmetto man on charges related to the 2018 fatal shooting and burning of Antonio Bradley.
Aaron David Koziak was found guilty Wednesday of second-degree murder with a firearm and abuse of a human body.
The jury deliberated for about 2 1/2 hours, with the verdict coming after a three-day trial presided over by Circuit Court Judge Frederick Mercurio at the Manatee County Judicial Center in downtown Bradenton.
A sentencing hearing will be held at a later date, likely sometime in January, Mercurio said.
The maximum sentence for second-degree murder in Florida is life in prison and the mandatory minimum for second-degree murder with a firearm is 25 years. The maximum penalty for abuse of a body, which is a second-degree felony, is 15 years in prison.
Sometime before the trial, the State Attorney’s Office offered Koziak and his defense lawyer, Jaime Garcia, a plea deal of 30 years, but the offer was rejected.
Koziak was previously denied the use of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law as his defense against the murder charge.
How the crime unfolded
He told investigators shortly after his arrest that he fatally shot the 35-year-old Bradley in the head on Nov. 14, 2018, before taking his body to MJ Road near Myakka City and setting it on fire.
When detectives arrived around 11:20 p.m. after a witness saw the fire and called 911, they found Bradley’s body on a pile of smoldering logs in the drizzling rain.
Firefighters arrived and put out the flames, but Bradley’s body had been severely burned.
Dr. Phoutthasone Thirakul, the medical examiner who did the autopsy on Bradley, testified in court Tuesday that he had burns to around 75% of his body, although she said it was a gunshot wound to his right temple that proved to be fatal.
In the courtroom
Prosecutors said Bradley had already been dead for hours before the burning.
Images of Bradley’s burned body were shown in the courtroom on Tuesday. His mother, Yolanda Charles, clutched a tissue and closed her eyes while some of the photos were shown, before she eventually left.
Koziak and his attorneys argued that the shooting was in self-defense.
He told detectives that Bradley was his drug dealer and that he owed him money. As a result of this debt, Bradley would often borrow Koziak’s 2016 gray Ford F-150 for extended periods.
Was there a fight?
He said the two had gotten into a fight the night of the shooting when Bradley grew frustrated over the situation. He said while the two were rolling around on the ground, a gun fell out of Bradley’s “baggy basketball shorts” and onto his stomach.
Koziak said he picked up the gun and shot Bradley in defense.
But prosecutors said there is no evidence of a fight, pointing to the neatness of his shirt in security footage captured after the shooting. Prosecutors also pointed to Koziak never saying any punches were thrown.
Prosecutors say they believe the killing took place between 7:04 and 7:12 p.m. based on security footage at the house of Lawrence Shackelford, a friend of Koziak’s.
The night of the killing
Frames were missing from the security footage and were unable to be recovered, prosecutors said. Shackelford later testified that Koziak had told him after the shooting that he was capable of removing frames from the security footage but was unsure if he had done so.
Koziak had been staying at Shackelford’s house for some time, he testified Tuesday. The two worked together installing security systems.
Shackelford said he got a call from Koziak just before 8 the night of the killing saying that he had shot someone.
When he arrived at his house, he said Koziak looked “panicked and flustered” and had bruising on his chest and hands. Photos showing some of that bruising were shown in the courtroom during closing arguments Wednesday afternoon.
“Did he look like he had been in a fight?” the defense asked Shackelford.
“Yes,” he said.
He also said that Koziak’s shirt was torn and bloody. Prosecutors said that if his shirt had any blood on it at any point, it was likely from when Koziak, with Shackelford’s help, loaded Bradley’s body into the bed of his pickup truck.
Koziak drove around for an extended period of time before video footage showed him stopping at a Circle K near Moccasin Wallow Road in Palmetto to purchase a container of gasoline around 9:15 p.m.
Prosecutors say the truck and the drug debt were a source of growing tension between the two.
“He doesn’t wanna do it anymore, he was over having a debt and this was the way out of this debt,” said Rebecca Freel, the assistant state attorney.
But the defense argued that Koziak felt threatened by Bradley, who they say grew increasingly frustrated by not getting his money.
Text messages exchanged between the two about money and the truck were submitted as evidence in court, including text messages sent from Bradley’s phone hours after his body was already discovered.
Prosecutors say these texts were sent by Koziak from Bradley’s phone to himself to make it seem like he was being threatened.
Koziak told detectives in an interview that he took Bradley’s two phones after the shooting and and tossed them. One was found on the north side of State Road 70, about two miles away from the block of MJ Road where Bradley’s body was discovered. The other phone was never recovered.
Koziak also told detectives that he cut the firearm used in the shooting into pieces with a hacksaw and threw it into water off of multiple bridges.
Detectives have not recovered a firearm.
