Search warrant affidavits released Thursday provide new details about the investigation of last month’s fatal shootings of a Plant City woman, two of her children and her mother.
Hailey Dempsey, 28, was one of the two women found shot on May 3 along with two of her children, ages 4 years and 4 months. Dempsey’s mother, 55-year-old Valerie DeBoe, was also killed.
The Plant City Police Department has released few details about the investigation, including the names of the people killed. Police have not provided any information about a suspect and no arrests have been made.
The Tampa Bay Times last month independently confirmed and reported the identities of the two women.
According to information previously released by police, officers responded to a disturbance in the 300 block of West Tever Street and found three people who had been shot. A 4-month-old and a 4-year-old died at the scene. Their mother, 28, was alive when officers arrived and died at a local hospital. A third child was found uninjured.
During the investigation, police were led to a second location in the 900 block of North Burton Street, where they found the mother of the 28-year-old woman dead from a gunshot wound. She was 55.
Hailey Dempsey and her husband, Jay Dempsey Jr., own a home in the 900 block of North Burton Street, where one of the shootings occurred, records show.
Some information in search warrants released Tuesday by the Hillsborough Clerk of Court is redacted but provide more information about what police discovered in the early stages of the investigation.
The department got a call shortly before 8 a.m. that day about a person screaming in the back yard of a home on West Tever Street near North Wheeler Street.
Police arrived and found a woman, later determined to be Hailey Dempsey, lying in the yard of a home in the 300 block of West Tever. Dempsey had what appeared to be a gunshot wound in her temple. She was on top of one of her children, who was dead.
Lying on top of Dempsey and the first child was a third child. That appears from the affidavit to be the child who survived. That child’s age is unclear.
On the ground next to them was the body of a fourth child who had a gunshot wound to the head.
Detectives obtained surveillance video from a home in the 900 block of North Franklin Street that captured audio of one of the children talking at about 5:37 a.m., asking to go back to a location that is redacted from the warrant affidavits.
Minutes later, at about 5:45, video from a home in the 700 block of West Saunders Street showed Hailey Dempsey walking from the alleyway north of the property, entering an open garage, and then continuing east on West Saunders.
Video from a home in the 500 block of West Saunders shows Hailey Dempsey knocking on the door of the home, then leaving when no one answers. The children can be heard crying in the video.
While working to confirm Hailey Dempsey was the woman who’d been shot with her children, detectives learned that on May 1, two days before the shootings, police responded to a domestic disturbance call at Hailey and Jay Dempsey’s home.
The Times previously reported details of that call based on an incident report released by police.
DeBoe called Plant City police about 6:30 p.m. about a possible domestic dispute between her daughter and son-in-law, according to the report. DeBoe was not at the couple’s Burton Street home at the time, the report shows.
Hailey and Jay Dempsey told an officer who responded to the house that they had been yelling at each other during an argument but that it did not escalate to physical contact.
“Hailey stated the verbal dispute was in regards to Jay being caught watching porn and cheating on Hailey,” the report states. “Jay became upset after admitting to it, which made Hailey want to leave the residence with their three children.”
The officer did not see injuries on either of the Dempseys. The officer was still there when DeBoe arrived and left with Hailey Dempsey and her children in Dempsey’s car, according to the report.
On the day of the shootings, after confirming Hailey Dempsey was one of the people who was shot, detectives went to her Burton Street home but no one answered, according to the search warrant affidavits. Parked at the home was a Toyota Sequoia registered to Jay Dempsey and a Toyota Camry registered to DeBoe.
Detectives spoke to DeBoe’s husband, who said DeBoe had gone to the Dempseys’ home to help Hailey Dempsey move. The husband said he hadn’t heard from his wife since the previous day.
Neighbors on Burton Street told police they saw Jay Dempsey leave the home early on the morning of the shooting and leave in his white Toyota sedan, the affidavits state. He appeared to be wearing body armor, the neighbors said. The Toyota sedan was not at the the home when detectives arrived.
Fearing for DeBoe’s safety, detectives entered the home and found her body upstairs, the warrants state. She’d been shot in the head.
Detectives obtained search warrants for the Burton Street home, the Toyota Sequoia and DeBoe’s Camry.
Tampa attorney Patrick B. Courtney previously told the Times last month that he is acting as a spokesperson for Jay Dempsey and his side of the family and that the family had no comment other than they have “faith in the law enforcement investigation.”
Reached Thursday by the Times, Courtney said he had not seen the warrant affidavits and did not immediately have a comment.
A Plant City police spokesperson said Thursday that the department had no updates and referred a reporter to the last statement issued May 8. The statement said detectives were continuing to “conduct interviews, review forensic evidence and analyze all aspects of the investigation” and that no final determination about the circumstances of the deaths had been made.
“Based on the information developed thus far, detectives do not believe there is an ongoing threat to the community,” the statement said. “The department asks the public to avoid speculation while investigators continue to follow the evidence and complete a thorough review of the facts.”
