The four attackers,[2] apparently inspired by the film Wonderland,[3] tortured and killed four men, two women, and a dog inside the home, making it the deadliest mass murder in Volusia County history.
Victorino was able to further motivate his accomplices by pointing out that the attack would likely allow them to kill an additional person they had grievances with, who ended up not being at the house that night.
[5] A jury found Troy Victorino, Robert Cannon, Jerone Hunter, and Michael Salas guilty of the massacre in August 2006.
Seventh Circuit Judge William A. Parsons upheld the jury's death penalty recommendation and called the killings "conscienceless" and "unnecessarily torturous.
That gun was supposed to be used for the murders, but the suspects couldn't find enough ammunition, so they rounded up about 15 baseball bats from neighborhood children instead.
[11] Two days before the massacre, a clerk at the New Smyrna Beach Wal-Mart witnessed Victorino and his co-conspirators "laughing and giggling and being rowdy" at the store.
The clerk told Volusia sheriff's investigators that she had a feeling the men "were up to no good" after spotting them in the store with baseball bats in hand.
Tito Gonzalez was murdered by Hunter, who fatally beat him in the head with a bat and stabbed him multiple times in the chest and stomach.
[16] The trial came to an end on August 2, 2006, when 7th Circuit Judge William Parsons sentenced Victorino and Hunter to death by lethal injection, and Cannon and Salas to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
[6] Victorino and Hunter were carrying out their sentences in one-person cells on death row at the Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida.
However, on June 14, 2017, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported that Victorino and Hunter were to receive new sentencing hearings due to a state Supreme Court decision that requires unanimity of jurors in recommending death.
[10] Victorino was found guilty of first-degree murder of all six victims, abuse of a dead human body, armed burglary of a dwelling, and animal cruelty.
[18] Hunter was also found guilty of first-degree murder of all six victims, conspiring to commit aggravated battery, tampering with physical evidence, abuse of a dead human body, and armed burglary of a dwelling.
[6] Salas was found guilty of first-degree murder of all six victims, conspiring to commit aggravated battery, tampering with physical evidence, and armed burglary of a dwelling.
[6] Belanger, Ayo-Roman, Nathan, and Vega were four friends who worked together at Burger King and rented the Telford Lane home.
Witnesses that grew up near him and his brother could confirm the instability in that house: there were drugs, violence and abuse, and a general lack of parental unity or care.
[21] Michael Salas' upbringing was on record by child protective services, and he and his brothers were determined to have been exposed to violence, drug-use, malnourishment, and abuse such as cigarette burns by their mother.
[22] In response to the Deltona massacre, the Florida legislature proposed a bill that would add additional "risk-to-public" hearings for probation violators with violent histories.