MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – A 12-year-old boy was playing catch outside with his brother and a friend. The driver of a 2014 Chevrolet Camaro was drag racing. That afternoon turned deadly when Nicholas Murrell ran to retrieve a football from the other side of the street while Schnider Jean stepped on the gas of the fast red convertible.
Jean was racing a black Mercedes-Benz sedan. Nicholas' brother Aaron Murrell and Tyrone Maxwell saw how Jean ran him over on Dec. 12, 2013.
"They just kept on going," Tyrone said after the crash.
Miami Gardens Police Department detectives responded to the hit-and-run incident at Northwest 29th Avenue and 152nd Terrace and talked to Aaron and Tyrone. Nicholas died in the hospital the next day.
Seeing his older brother injured before his death haunted Aaron.
"I thought I was dreaming and I started screaming," Aaron said after the crash. "When I ran to him, I was going to move him but they told me not to touch him because it was going to make it worse so I just left him."
Surveillance video, a witness and a tip eventually helped detectives to track down the rental Chevrolet Camaro, which Jean's girlfriend had rented.
After killing Nicholas and driving away, Jean was involved in another fatal crash a few months later. He was speeding again in a 1998 Cadillac Deville. Florida Highway Patrol troopers arrested Jean and later identified the victim of that fatal crash as 75-year-old Norman Crews, a grandfather.
More than five years later, Jean, now a 28-year-old father, is feeling the weight of the criminal justice system.
Prosecutors charged him with leaving the scene of an accident causing death and reckless vehicular homicide. He was convicted of both felonies. On Friday, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Spencer J. Multack sentenced him to 15 years in prison followed by a decade of probation. Jean is being held at the Miami-Dade County Pre-Trial Detention Center.