Florida man arrested, charged with murder of Kentucky teen killed on vacation

Published 5:05 pm Tuesday, March 23, 2021

A Florida man has been charged with murder and attempted murder in connection with the Tuesday morning shooting of two Kentucky teenage boys.

Christopher Lawrence Cox, 37, of Panama City Beach, Florida, was arrested at the scene, police said, after Cox shot two teenage stepbrothers on the beach near a resort.

The names of the two 14-year-old victims have not been released. They were shot early Tuesday after some kind of encounter with Cox on the beach in front of the resort where the pair were vacationing with their family.

Responding officers found one teen dead at the scene and the second was shot in the extremities but was treated and released from a local hospital.

Although police investigators haven’t confirmed the story, a person reported to be a family member told a local TV station that Cox approached the pair, asked for a cigarette and then told them to “run for the ocean because I’m going to shoot you.”