Donald Pettit Killed In Road Rage Incident
August 6, 2008 by Morbid
UPDATE – 65-year-old James Patrick Wonder of Miramar was arrested and charged with the murder of Donald Pettit.
PEMBROKE PINES, Fla. – On Tuesday morning, Pettit, 52, and a man got into an argument with another man standing outside of his car in the parking lot of the Pembroke Pines post office. It may have been over a parking space. The gunman then pulled out a gun and shot Pettit in the head. Even more tragic is the fact that Pettit’s 12-year-old daughter was in the car at the time. The gunman then fled the scene. Pettit’s daughter heard the shot and got out of the car to find her father lying on the ground bleeding. She used a cell phone to call 911.
Pettit who was married with two children, was also a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agent. He als served in the U.S. Army for 20 years and spent 15 years as an investigator with the Food and Drug Administration. He was unarmed at the time of this incident.
The shooter was described as being in his 50s or 60s, 6 feet 1 inch tall with white, slicked-back hair, saggy cheeks and a medium build. Police said he was driving a green or gray Chrysler 300. A $275,000 reward is now being offered for information leading to his arrest. If anyone out there has any information on this, contact the Pembroke Pines Police Department Detective Bureau at 954-431-2225, E-mail Tips@ppines.com, or call Crimestoppers at 954-493-TIPS.
Check out this 4 minute news report. It has all the details in this incident. Whoever did this is fucked.
This shooter is cold-blooded, huh? To shoot someone over an argument in a parking lot is one thing, but to also do it when the person’s kid is sitting in the car. Woah.
2:17 pm on August 6th, 2008
No child should ever have to witness their parents murder. What’s worse is why this poor guy died – over a fucking parking spot of all things! I hope they catch the asshole who did this soon. I watched a heartbreaking press conference this morning where the Donald’s widow spoke. They were married for 18 years and have 2 daughters together. The poor woman was so distraught she could barely talk. I feel so bad for this family. I hope justice is swift and the asshat responsible is caught very soon.
2:19 pm on August 6th, 2008
Damn I’m not a betting kind of person. But I would bet that they will have this guy in custody pretty quickly.
2:39 pm on August 6th, 2008
Ya think? He is SERIOUSLY fucked. I bet 20 bucks they’ll find him by the end of the week.
4:11 pm on August 6th, 2008
They have a person of interest in custody….
4:26 pm on August 6th, 2008
I’ve gotten pretty pissed about traffic, and I’ve done some questionable things as a result. But, even as a gun owner, shooting another driver has never crossed my mind.
But people get irrationally angry over shit like parking spots. I had some hoodrat try to fight me over a parking spot once. Actually, not over the spot itself, but over a “big word” I used when I was offering to move my car. I was trying to make her look “ign’ant”, apparently.
Why can’t the world be like a comic book? This little girl would grow up to have some awesome superpower and avenge her dad’s death. That’s how things should work.
6:10 pm on August 6th, 2008
May I personally volunteer to hunt this worthless PIECE OF SHIT down and then donate the reward to his family!
9:10 pm on August 6th, 2008
Looks like they got the guy.
http://cbs4.com/local/killer.post.office.2.789159.html
Watch the video if you wanna get depressed.
11:29 pm on August 6th, 2008
Can you say “BUSTED”?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,398545,00.html
Morbid or Imp, we need an update with a pic of this scumbag – James Patrick Wonder!
1:00 am on August 7th, 2008
They arrested Wonder at the Davie dialysis center. I can see it already. He is gonna play the scared sick old man card. Bah.
2:26 am on August 7th, 2008
I watched the video. Thanks for the link Morbid. That poor woman! I can’t possibly imagine how she is feeling right now.
3:15 am on August 7th, 2008
oh LQQKY my Daddy [wonder] … from the photo I don’t see a shortage of parking spots
Seriously now is that the Special Federal Agent’s car in an empty parking lot, where he was gun downed ? for real is that the lil girls opinion a parking spot at the post office ?
Wow
I am going to be extra nice when I’m out knowing so many are carrying guns and missing their blood pressure pills
6:04 am on August 7th, 2008
Heartbreaking story and so sad for their whole entire family, The man who did the shooting, trust me he will get his!!!!!!!!!!! To the entire family my prayers are with you all
4:17 pm on August 8th, 2008
In case you guys didn’t know, there is some controversy brewing locally about this. It has been discovered that this was indeed the result of road rage, and that the victim was the one who followed the suspect into the parking lot (someone I heard on the radio pointed out that they knew this from the way the agent’s car was parked erratically). So a lot of people are stating that the suspect might have shot in self defense, and that the agent was wrong for following the guy in there after arguing with him on the road, especially with his little girl in the car. However, police are speculating that Pettit might have followed the guy in there acting as an officer, meaning he was going to arrest the guy for driving erratically or whatever it was that happened on the road. Regardless, most people agree that this guy had no right to shoot the victim.
Also, it has been reported that the suspect dyed his hair black and rented a car in order to keep from being identified.
11:45 pm on August 8th, 2008
wow Angel that does make sense… The shooter in disguise – spells g·u·i·l·t·y. That just makes me 10 times more Happy that he got caught
1:27 am on August 13th, 2008
The local controversy has exploded and then grown absolutely dead quiet. It seems that the ‘Officer” was a polygraph operator and not any kind of cop. In addition, the older gentleman (sick and old – he was on his way to kidney dialysis) pulled off the road after the energetic give and take of a road rage incident. The ‘agent’ passed the parking lot where Mr. Wonder pulled in and then came back to escalate the situation instead of just moving along as he should have done. It appears that he threatened the older gentleman and may have told him that he had a gun in his car. (which he did) As he turned, he was shot in what appears to be self-defense. The ‘feds’ are claiming that the ‘agent’ was ‘on duty’ (that is, in HIS OWN car, NOT in any kind of uniform and WITH his 12 year old daughter) so that his family can get the $300,000.00 death benefit from the government. As soon as people started to hear the actual truth of the incident, the news stopped suddenly and nothing has been written the last 2 or three days. It became apparent to most south Floridians that the ‘agent’ was deeply involved in the road rage incident and actually did follow the older man into the parking lot and did get out of his car to confront him. It appears that the ‘agent’ was the aggressor after all.
8:13 pm on August 13th, 2008
Author: impqueen
Comment:
So… what you’re saying is that it was okay for James Wonder to shoot a man at close range, who was not pointing a weapon at him, in front of his daughter?
A federal agent is a federal agent. Many of them do things other than “cop” work – in fact, federal agents are not police officers, that’s why they’re called federal agents. Donald Pettit worked for US Customs and Border Patrol.
Why does this man’s occupation make a difference to you? He’s still dead, his child will have to live with the trauma of seeing him shot and dying, blood spilling all over the pavement, at the hands of James Wonder. There is no excuse, ever, for shooting a man in front of his child.
My parents are in their sixties and neither of them is old and feeble, and one of them is ill. Age and illness would never make it okay for my parent to shoot a man, and in fact, my parents wouldn’t even have a gun in the car or on their persons with which to do the shooting. This guy was ready for a confrontation before he ever got in one, and he was not shot or hurt in any way by Pettit. Self-defense won’t work for this one.
It’s not self-defense when you shoot a man who is not attacking you or holding a gun. Verbal altercations do not make murder okay. What is your connection to this case?
In answer…
I do not, in any way, believe that Mr. Wonder should have shot Pettit. I was just trying to fill in information that was, at first, missing. I think it is positively horrible that Pettit’s daughter saw, and will never forget, what happened to her father. But, please remember that Pettit chose to escalate this incident, fully knowing that his daughter WAS in the car. There is no reason to think that Wonder knew she was there. However, Pettit DID know. When he followed Mr. Wonder into the parking lot and got out of his car, he should have known better. If he was an ‘agent’, he had no official business with Mr. Wonder (as he was not a cop) and could not cite or otherwise discipline Mr. Wonder. He got out of his car when he should have kept driving and let the incident die. Instead, he did. I do not believe that the penalty for road rage should be death – maybe just for stupidity.
I have no direct connection to this case, I just live in the area. Do you live in Florida? We have a law here that has been coined the ‘Stand your Ground’ law. A person is legally allowed to use deadly force against someone attacking or threatening them in any way and is NOT obligated to try to get away instead. We can now use deadly force to protect our home and belongings. Yea, I know…I’m not real happy about that either.
But…the problem with the law enforcement telling the public he was on duty has been that it was obvious that he WASN”T on duty and he was acting in a dangerous and irresponsible way – especially with his daughter in the car. I’m sure she spent the last five or ten minutes of her father’s life begging him to stop fighting with the man in the other car. These things scare kids!! The general feeling is that the man’s family is not entitled to a ‘reward’ of the $300,000.00 death benefit because not only was he obviously not on duty, he was obviously in the WRONG.
Remember, Pettit had a gun too, he just didn’t get to it fast enough.
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