Man suspected in 2002 Broward murder arrested after decades at large
When Navlette Williams got the call that her son’s alleged killer had been arrested after evading authorities for more than 20 years, she cried and rejoiced at once.
Williams told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that she had not given up hope that the man accused of killing her 23-year-old son in Lauderhill in 2002 would eventually be found.
Authorities knew shortly after the murder of 23-year-old Kirk Ennis that suspect Kareem Lightbourne, 47, fled to the Caribbean islands, according to his arrest warrant. After a few years passed with no arrest, the Sun Sentinel reported in 2005 that Lightbourne was on the Sheriff’s Office’s most wanted list.
He was only recently detained in the Dominican Republic. As of Tuesday, he is held in the Broward Main Jail.
Lightbourne is accused of breaking into the Lauderhill apartment of his ex-girlfriend at the time, Monifa Smith, shooting Ennis to death, then kidnapping Smith on Dec. 2, 2002.
Smith called police from a Winn Dixie in the 1500 block of North State Road 7 on the morning of Dec. 2 and said Lightbourne kidnapped her from her apartment in the 4100 block of Northwest 21st Street, where she had been with Ennis earlier that morning and where Lightbourne had previously lived with Smith, according to an arrest warrant.
She told officers she “feared” that Lightbourne had shot Ennis, the warrant said. Officers found him lying dead on the floor, near the front door of the apartment and a trail of blood leading from a bedroom to his body.
Ennis and Smith met up at The Harbor Grille in Dania Beach the night before the murder, the Sun Sentinel reported in 2002. Smith told detectives she and Ennis went back to her apartment about 4 a.m. and watched a movie together, then both went into the master bedroom, according to the warrant.
Smith said she was in the bathroom when she heard gunshots, opened the door and found Lightbourne holding a gun, the warrant said. She said she believed Lightbourne was hiding in her children’s bedroom while she and Ennis were at the apartment.
Lightbourne allegedly threatened Smith with the gun, forcing her to sit on the couch in the living room while he drug Ennis’s body from the bedroom to the front door, the warrant said. Smith told detectives Lightbourne then forced her to leave the apartment with him.
He drove to multiple locations in South Florida, including his home in Boynton Beach, where he picked up a then-2-year-old child he has in common with Smith, and told her during the drive that his ‘people’ are watching her and will kill her and the baby,” according to the warrant.
Smith initially told detectives a different story when officers met her at the Winn Dixie, but a few days later she said she wasn’t truthful in her statement and that she had recited a story Lightbourne devised, the warrant said, “and that she went along with it in fear.”
She drove herself to the Winn Dixie where she met officers and told them the story Lightbourne had planned, which was that Lightbourne had released her after driving around for hours with her captive and blindfolded, and that she ran to the store and called police.
Law enforcement officials knew within two days after the murder that Lightbourne had fled to the Turks and Caicos Islands the same day of the alleged murder and kidnapping, according to the warrant. Authorities received an Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution warrant on Dec. 4, 2002.
In 2005, authorities received a tip that Lightbourne would be at a funeral in Fort Lauderdale, and undercover deputies attended to surveil. They handcuffed a man they believed was Lightbourne, but it was another man entirely.
They instead arrested Donovan Lightbourn, the 20-year-old grandson of the woman whose funeral the deputies covertly attended and who was from the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Sun Sentinel reported in February 2005.
FBI Miami Special Agent Willie J. Creech said in an email Monday that Lightbourne was “recently” found in the Dominican Republic but did not provide further information on their investigation. The statement said he was detained there and brought to the U.S. for immigration violations.
Lightbourne was booked into the Broward County jail on Wednesday, jail records show. He is being held on one count of first-degree murder, one count of armed kidnapping, violation of probation and an immigration hold.
Attorney information was not available Tuesday afternoon.
Ennis had two young children and one on the way when he was killed, his mother said. They are now 21, 24 and 25 years old.
“It hurts, not hearing his voice no more,” Williams said, “and at the same time having children, them too. … It’s very rough. … You don’t know what’s going on through their head.” She said she sometimes still dreams of Ennis telling her not to cry.
After the decades of waiting, Ennis’s mother, Williams, said she hopes to attend Lightbourne’s court hearings and follow the case as it progresses.
“I want to go to everything. I suffered 21 years, and I need to know everything,” she said. “As long as my body allows me to move, I want to go. I want to know everything.”
One thing she said she hopes to learn is why.
“For a person to do something, there must be a reason behind it … the reason why you killed my child,” Williams said. “I need to know, you must have a reason. … Let me know the reason.”
Information from the Sun Sentinel archives was used in this report.