Randy Chapman repeatedly warned his 19-year-old daughter about the company she was keeping.
“I did my damnest to try to steer her away from that crowd, but she was 19 and she wanted to do what she wanted to do,” Chapman said Tuesday.
On Monday, Carley Nicole Chapman was found shot to death at the Hampton Court Apartments in Mangonia Park. Two other teenagers — Martavious Brown and Se’sawn Danford, both 17 — were found by Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputies in the residence. Brown was dead and Danford died later at St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach.
The sheriff’s office has not offered any details about a shooter.
Chapman said his daughter, a graduate of Palm Beach Gardens High School, had moved into the Mangonia Park apartment about a month ago with a boyfriend he knows only as “Face.”
“Face” is a “gangster kid” and a “bad seed” who was not in the apartment at the time of the shooting, Chapman said.
“She was just in love with the wrong guy,” Chapman said. “And she was at the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s terrible, man. Too young, too soon to die.”
Chapman said he spent most of last weekend with Carley attending a wedding and “everything was great.” Carley was working at the Toys “R” Us in Palm Beach Gardens and was still trying to get over the death of her mother about a month ago that left her “devastated,” her father said.
On Monday while working in Orlando, Chapman said, he received a frantic call from Carley’s best friend detailing what happened in the Mangonia Park apartment.
Chapman said he received custody of his daughter when she was 5 and raised her with Carley’s stepmother. The house Chapman shares with his wife is cluttered with photos of Carley. There is also a birthday card Carley recently created for her dad that refers to him as her “best friend.”
“For the past three months, I talked to her about who she was hanging around with,” Chapman said.
Chapman may have had reason to be concerned. In a Palm Beach Post story published Sept. 5, 2012, Carley Chapman’s stepmother — Paula Stewart — said her stepdaughter was a good friend of a boy killed in a shooting during a Sweet 16 celebration at the Riviera Beach city marina that left two teenagers dead and six others injured.
Chapman said his daughter was a “good kid” who got into minor trouble “but wasn’t into the drug scene and all that.”
The Hampton Court Apartments have been the scene of sporadic violence and crime. In August 2007, a 14-year-old boy was arrested for raping a 42-year-old woman in the complex, which is located just north of 45th Street. In April 2009, four teenagers robbed a group of men just outside the gates of the complex then shot and killed one of the victims.
Former Mangonia Park councilwoman and county commissioner Addie Greene said she was upset to see another instance of violence involving teens and young adults.
“I don’t think it’s just Hampton Court, it’s everywhere,” Greene said.
Chapman, Brown and Danford became the 48th, 49th, and 50th homicide victims confirmed by Palm Beach County law-enforcement agencies in 2014. That total grew to 51 Monday night when a man was killed in a shooting outside a mini-mart in suburban West Palm Beach.
The four murders were the most in the county to occur in a single day this year, and the most since three people died in separate incidents on Memorial Day.
“What’s frustrating to me, I am so sick and tired of all communities, black, white, whoever, leaving it up to the government or to the elected officials,” Greene said. “We in these neighborhoods have to do something about the guns and violence among our teenagers ourselves. It’s on our doorstep right now.”
For Randy Chapman, that reality hit home on Monday.
“A parent should never have to bury their children,” Chapman said. “Never. Not at that age.”
Staff writer Julius Whigham II contributed to this story.
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