{"id":253766,"date":"2026-05-01T11:05:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T11:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/253766\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T11:05:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T11:05:11","slug":"i-thought-it-was-a-prank-teens-describe-attempted-robbery-turned-deadly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/253766\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I thought it was a prank’: Teens describe attempted robbery turned deadly"},"content":{"rendered":"

FORT MYERS, Fla. (Court TV) \u2014 Emotions ran high in a Florida courtroom on Thursday morning as two teenagers testified to witnessing a deadly shooting that killed their friend.<\/p>\n

\"Thomas<\/p>\n

Thomas Stein appears in court during his trial on April 29, 2026. (Court TV)<\/p>\n

Thomas Stein<\/a>, 18, is standing trial on a charge of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted robbery in the death of 15-year-old Kayla Rincon-Miller on March 17, 2024. Two teenage girls who were with Rincon-Miller the night she died took the stand on Thursday to talk about the terrifying events that led up to the shooting.<\/p>\n

Louann Dejaie, 18, and Emma Wright, 19, had gone to the movies that night with Rincon-Miller, and they saw \u201cBob Marley: One Love\u201d at a local theater. When the film ended, the trio went outside the building, where they smoked marijuana before deciding to walk to McDonald\u2019s for food.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were just talking, dancing,\u201d Wright described. \u201cWe had taken Kayla\u2019s phone and started taking photos of her, telling her to make the sidewalk her red carpet\u2026just being girls.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Emma<\/p>\n

Emma Wright testifies in April 30, 2026. (Court TV)<\/p>\n

As they walked, the teens all noticed an SUV slow down to approximately 5 mph and roll past them. \u201cWe were just thinking that they were weird,\u201d Wright said. \u201cWe kind of made fun of them while they were driving past us, just saying like, \u2018What are you doing?’\u201d<\/p>\n

MORE |\u00a0FL v. Thomas Stein: Cape Coral Teen Murder Trial<\/a><\/p>\n

After the SUV passed, Wright and Dejaie described the vehicle making a U-turn and then driving straight back towards them. The SUV stopped right in front of them, and then people got out of the car. \u201cI thought it was a prank, a joke that maybe one of Kayla\u2019s or Louanne\u2019s friends were pulling on us,\u201d said Wright.<\/p>\n

Both Wright and Dejaie described three to four people getting out of the car and attacking them. \u201cThis happened quicker than I could process,\u201d Dejaie testified. \u201cI was scared and I just wanted to say anything to deflect the situation, so I automatically started screaming, \u2018We don\u2019t have anything!’\u201d Wright and Dejaie both described the masked men, who were Black, as telling them to hand over \u201ceverything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Louann<\/p>\n

Louann Dejaie testified on April 30, 2026. (Court TV)<\/p>\n

While the passengers in the vehicle were all described as Black men, both Wright and Dejaie said that the car\u2019s driver was white, with a bowl cut and blue eyes. \u201cI saw the driver go straight for Kayla,\u201d Wright said.<\/p>\n

Dejaie said she heard three gunshots before the assailants all got back into the car and fled from the scene. She immediately ran to Kayla. \u201cShe was like, \u2018I just got shot,\u2019 and I remember telling her, \u2018It\u2019s gonna be OK. It\u2019s gonna be OK,\u2019 and I just didn\u2019t want to believe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stein\u2019s defense questioned the accuracy of the victims\u2019 recollections: both girls said they believed there were three or four people who attacked them, but only two people have been arrested and charged in the case. \u201cWe just knew we had been ambushed,\u201d Dejaie said.<\/p>\n

After both eyewitnesses left the courtroom, Stein\u2019s defense team moved for a mistrial. His attorneys claimed that Wright changed her story on the stand and identified Stein as the shooter for the first time, despite previously saying she could not remember who shot Rincon-Miller. Prosecutors countered that the jury had already been made aware that Wright\u2019s story had changed multiple times because of the trauma and stress from the event. Judge Nicholas Thompson denied the motion, saying he found no violations.<\/p>\n

The only other person charged in the case, Christopher Horne Jr., previously pleaded no contest to the same charges Stein faces as part of a plea agreement under which he will testify at the trial. He is expected to be sentenced to 25 years in prison next month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT MYERS, Fla. (Court TV) \u2014 Emotions ran high in a Florida courtroom on Thursday morning as two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,68669],"class_list":["post-253766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-thomas-stein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}