A 36-year-old man from Florida is facing serious charges after investigators say he attacked and killed his own mother in a disturbing incident caught on camera. The suspect, named Russell Antonio Moore, was arrested on Monday and is now charged with first-degree premeditated murder and tampering with evidence. The victim was his mother, 58-year-old Shambray Lavern Levy.
According to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, the story began on the morning of December 9, when Moore called 911 from their home on Beaty Grove Drive. On the call, Moore seemed oddly calm, talking about getting “put down by lethal injection” and telling the dispatcher, “There’s a dead body here” and “I put her down.” He said the victim was his mother, Shambray.
When deputies arrived, they went inside to check on Levy’s welfare and made a terrible discovery. They found her body under blood-soaked blankets. Her skin showed signs that she had been dead for some time. The scene was so concerning that investigators looked for any security cameras that might show what happened—and what they found, they say, was shocking.
A home surveillance camera, set up inside the house, had recorded a brutal six-minute attack. Authorities say it happened on December 6, around 3:30 p.m. In the video, Moore appears to throw his mother to the floor, jump on top of her, and hit her repeatedly.
3He also seems to strangle her. Eventually, she stopped moving. At that point, investigators say Moore left the room, came back with a gray concrete brick, and dropped it on his mother’s head twice. After that, he never saw her move again. When he realized the camera had captured the attack, he reportedly tried to destroy it using a shovel.
A friend of Levy’s later told police that Levy had worried about Moore’s violent behavior in the past. The friend said Levy had been advised to put a lock on her bedroom door after Moore reportedly hit her and threatened her with brass knuckles.
Moore’s sister, who grew worried when she couldn’t reach their mother, called Moore that same morning. He told her, “It’s fine. It’s all been taken care of. They’ll just put me down [with] lethal injection.” The sister then shared with detectives that Levy had recently received a large sum of money after her own mother passed away. Levy planned to leave some of that money to Moore if anything ever happened to her.
In an interview with investigators, Moore spoke in a strange way, saying he now lived a “normal free life” until he got what he called his “trust fund.” He also kept talking about it being his “constitutional right” to get a lethal injection. Shortly after, he asked for a lawyer.
For now, Moore is being held without bond. He has a pretrial detention hearing scheduled for Friday. Media reports say he remains in custody, facing the possibility of a very serious punishment if found guilty.
