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Mistaken Identity Blamed In Palmetto Fire, Shooting

News Channel 8 photo by CHRIS HODGES

Deputies are still searching for the suspect who firebombed this home.

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By ANTHONY CORMIER, Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: February 11, 2008

Updated: 02/10/2008 11:13 pm

PALMETTO - She awoke at 4 a.m. with smoke in her lungs and fire at her window. Her children snuggled next to her in bed.

Nanise Raymond sat up straight.

Something, someone, rustled in the bushes outside.

Raymond, 21, ran into a hallway.

"Mama," she called, "the house is on fire."

Her disabled mother struggled to get out of her bed, while her sister Misha, six months' pregnant, jumped up. As the family of women and children ran out of the house, Nanise leading the way, her children right behind, they were met with gunfire.

Nanise took a bullet in a knee.

In the end, it probably was a mistake.

The Raymond family was likely not the intended victim of the bizarre crime that left their duplex scorched and sent Nanise Raymond into surgery Sunday morning.

Retaliation Suspected

Friends and neighbors said that the attackers were targeting a 25-year-old linked to a fatal shooting last week in Rubonia.

The suspect's mother lives next door to the Raymonds, and the two families discussed the possibility of retaliation against the man sometime over the weekend.

Several neighbors had warned the sheriff's office that violence was likely to come to their cul-de-sac. They asked for extra patrols.

Their fears were realized early Sunday when, deputies said, two men threw Molotov cocktails - beer bottles, likely, filled with gasoline or alcohol - into the Raymond home and shot at the family as they tried to escape.

In the hallway, Raymond again called to her mother.

Valencia Raymond, 45, hobbled to the door as a window smashed behind her and a beer bottle came flying through. It exploded on the floor, sending flames creeping onto the walls and the sofa and the carpet.

The women gathered the children, 2 and 3 years old. Misha crept along a wall.

The family moved slowly, covering their noses. Nanise made it out first.

A man in a hood watched her, leveled a pistol, started firing.

Another man, dressed in black, ran around a corner and began shooting, too.

The family tumbled back into the living room. Nanise screamed, and fell near the sofa.

'Cracker Fires'

Misha and the children scrambled into the back bedroom. The kids wiggled under the bed. Misha squeezed between a wall and a dresser, tucking her head and clutching her pregnant belly.

Three-year-old Anayshia stroked her sister's head and told her not to worry. The children are deathly afraid of firecrackers. They call them "cracker fires."

Under the bed, Anayshia told her sister: "Don't worry, we'll leave when those men are done with their cracker fires."

In the hallway, glass sprayed in Valencia's lap. The stuffing of her couch got tangled in her hair. A bullet thumped off a chair, and Valencia dropped to the floor, closed her eyes and pretended she was dead.

Nanise was crying. Her knee was bloody. The bullets seemed to stop, and Valencia opened her eyes.

We've got to get out, she thought, or else it will be the fire that gets us.

She screamed at her daughters.

"Now! Let's go now!"

Mistaken Identity

Soon, neighbors started running over. The children ran into the cul-de-sac.

Someone ran through the front door and dragged Nanise into the street where the blood from her wounds stained the concrete. Misha was doubled over in pain and sat near the grass.

There is speculation in the neighborhood that the Raymonds were mistakenly targeted, that the shadowy figures who threw homemade bombs and tried to kill the family were looking for someone else.

On Thursday night, a man in Rubonia was shot to death after a dispute over drugs, deputies said.

Prosecutors said that China T. Smith, whose mother lived next door to the Raymond family, acknowledged he was involved in the Rubonia shooting.

He was not charged, however. Still, Smith turned himself in on an unrelated drug charge but was released on bail.

A family friend, Shavonda Bailey, said that Smith went into hiding when his rivals promised to kill him.

"These guys weren't looking for this family," Bailey said. "They just got the wrong house."

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