Hillsborough Deputy Kevin Davis found him sitting on a dock.
Kamal Padlowski stared at the water below. Next to him, two kitchen knives stood upright, their blades stabbed into the wooden dock.
The late evening sun cast long shadows when Davis and the other deputies arrived at Little Harbor Marinas in Ruskin on May 25, 2024. They were responding to a 911 call reporting a gunshot.
Davis asked Padlowski if anyone was shot.
“I wish,” Padlowski said, according to body camera footage played for a jury Tuesday at the Hillsborough County Courthouse.
Prosecutors say Padlowski, 52, pushed Melvin Montero Jimenez to the ground, knocking him unconscious before dragging him by the ankles into the water. Charged with first-degree murder, Padlowski faces up to life in prison if convicted.
At the center of the state’s case is a surveillance video that prosecutors say captured the crime. After dragging Jimenez, 47, into the water, the footage shows Padlowski threw one of Jimenez’s brown leather flip-flops in after him, then kicked the second in, too.
As Padlowski walked back to his boat, the footage shows, he stopped to stare at one of the floating sandals.
“At the end of the day, what this case comes down to is the video,” Assistant State Attorney Rebekah Kaufman told the jury during opening statements. “You came into this court with common sense. You are allowed to use it throughout the trial.”
In his opening statement, Alex Stavrou, a defense attorney representing Padlowski, said Jimenez was “loud, unsteady and becoming increasingly unpredictable” while on the boat with Padlowski and a woman Stavrou identified as Padlowski’s fiancee.
After the three talked and drank for about 40 minutes, Stavrou said, the situation quickly changed. He told the jury they would hear evidence that Jimenez became aggressive and that Padlowski had to “physically intervene to remove him from the boat.” He also told the jury they would hear testimony that Jimenez made “serious threats” to the couple.
Padlowski did not chase Jimenez, Stavrou told the jury. Nor did his client have a weapon. The video, he added, has no audio.
“No direct evidence shows what each man intended,” he said. “The law does not permit speculation.”
Jimenez disappeared after a beach day
Jimenez and his partner, Angela Sprenger, woke up that Saturday morning with no plans but two reasons to celebrate: Sprenger’s 7-year-old grandson, Caden McPherson, had finished second grade the previous day, and Jimenez landed a contract to install security cameras at Walmart.
They stopped at a Dollar General, where they filled their cooler with ice, drinks, chips and jerky sticks. Sprenger bought beach chairs.
Sprenger spent most of the early afternoon on the beach with Jimenez and her grandson, she testified Tuesday. After she and Jimenez shared an eight-pack of beer, Jimenez walked to Sunset Grill and Beach Bar, a restaurant near the beach with an outdoor bar, Sprenger said. There, he met Padlowski.
The afternoon wore on. Jimenez told Sprenger he might want to stay until sunset.
“We have to go soon,” Sprenger recalled telling Jimenez around 5:30 p.m. He had a smile on his face, she told the court, and she wanted him to have a good time.
Jimenez asked a friend to tell Sprenger he planned to go back to Padlowski’s boat for drinks.
Back on the beach, Sprenger waited, she told the court. The afternoon grew hotter.
Jimenez was nowhere to be found. “We looked everywhere,” she said. Jimenez had left his phone in their car. “He knows my number,” Sprenger thought. She figured he would call.
Around 5:50 p.m., surveillance footage shows Jimenez removed his flip-flops on the dock near Padlowski’s boat. He sat at the edge of the dock and splashed the water with his toes.
Jimenez looked over at Padlowski, who talked to a woman on the boat. Jimenez then picked himself back up and walked, swaying slightly, to the boat, where he spent the next roughly 40 minutes with the couple.
At 6:37 p.m., a man called 911 to report hearing a gunshot. Two men were arguing on a dock, he said, and a woman in a red dress appeared to have a gun. Detectives investigating the scene later found a BB gun on the boat.
“I heard a shot,” he told the dispatcher. “He’s laying in the water and they’re not doing anything to get him out.”
Back home, Sprenger bathed and put her grandson to bed. The sun set, and she continued waiting.
Then, on a Ruskin community Facebook page, she saw a post about a possible gunshot at the marina.
At 2:34 a.m., Sprenger called 911. Her fiance had met someone at a bar, she told the dispatcher.
“He didn’t come back to us,” she said in a recording of the call prosecutors played for the jury. “I’m freaking out.”
Closing arguments in the trial are expected Wednesday.
