State Attorney's Office: Fatal road rage shooting justified under Stand Your Ground law

A confessed shooter involved in a deadly road rage incident from last spring in Golden Gate Estates will not be criminally charged, according to the Collier County Sheriff’s Office.

The shooter, whose identity has not been released by the sheriff’s office, was cleared of wrongdoing a few months after the shooting.

“This case is closed,” said Collier County Sheriff's Office Spokesperson Michelle Batten via email. “The State Attorney’s Office concurs that the use of force by the shooter was justifiable.”

The man killed in the shooting was David Norgard, 24, of Golden Gate Estates. He was transported to Physicians Regional-Pine Ridge after the shooting and died about 30 minutes after his arrival.

Norgard sustained two gunshot wounds to the chest during the incident, which occurred near the intersection of 16th Avenue Southwest and 23rd Street Southwest on March 1 around 9 p.m.

Previous coverage: CCSO investigating death of 24-year-old after shooting

The shooter was cleared of wrongdoing by the State Attorney’s Office about three months later, on May 22, according to records obtained by the Naples Daily News.

Samantha Syoen, the communications director for the State Attorney's Office 20th Judicial Circuit, said her office reviewed the shooting and agreed with the sheriff’s office that it was a justifiable homicide based on Stand Your Ground law.

The sheriff’s office cited Marsy’s law when asked why the name of the shooter and his wife, who was present for the shooting, were redacted from reports.

Marsy’s Law, which was approved by voters as part of Amendment Six in November 2018, can be used by public institutions to prevent the disclosure of information or records that could be used to locate or harass a victim or a victim's family.

The shooter was a victim of battery during the road rage incident, Batten said.

The shooter's statement

The shooter told detectives the incident began when he was driving home from dinner with friends at Yard House in Naples, according to a sheriff’s office incident report.

He was interviewed by two detectives away from the scene, at a Collier County Sheriff’s Office location, after the shooting.

The shooter was driving a gray Ford pickup. When he crossed over Collier Boulevard from Pine Ridge Road onto White Boulevard, he noticed a small green car driving too close behind him, the shooter said.

The shooter told detectives he “tapped” his brakes to get the driver of the green car to back off, but the green car got even closer, according to the report.

He was driving on White Boulevard approaching a bridge area when the driver of the green car attempted to pass him and the shooter sped up to prohibit the green car from passing him, the shooter told detectives.

The green car was still behind his vehicle and the shooter continued onto 23rd Street Southwest from White Boulevard, he told detectives.

The shooter then slowed down to turn east onto 16th Avenue Southwest from 23rd Street Southwest.

When the shooter slowed his vehicle, the green car passed the shooter on the wrong side of the road, quickly turned in front of the shooter's vehicle and abruptly stopped in the middle of the road, the shooter told detectives.

He had to stop to avoid hitting the green car in front of him, the shooter told detectives.

After he stopped, a young man got out of the green car in front of him so quickly that “he didn’t have time to do anything,” the shooter told detectives in the report.

The young man was yelling at the shooter to get out of his vehicle as he walked toward him and was at the shooter’s door within seconds, the shooter told detectives.

The shooter “began to open the door out of reaction” and the young man got between the door and the shooter and was blocking the shooter from exiting his truck, the shooter told detectives.

The young man began punching the shooter and the shooter reached for his pistol with his right hand as he pushed the young man back with his left hand, the shooter told detectives.

The shooter told the young man to stop and attempted to push him away. When the young man resisted, the shooter turned the pistol and shot him twice, the shooter told detectives.

The young man backed up and raised his arms then fell backwards on the roadway, the shooter told detectives.

The shooter kept his pistol in his vehicle, secured on a magnet, and put it on the driver’s seat of his vehicle after the incident, he told investigators.

He was punched in the ear during the struggle, the shooter told investigators. In his report, a detective wrote the shooter had a red and swollen ear after the incident.

None of the sheriff’s office reports mention the shooter receiving medical attention for the ear injury or any other injury.

After he shot the young man, the shooter saw a car approaching and flagged it down so it wouldn’t hit the young man as he was lying in the roadway, the shooter told investigators.

When asked why he shot the young man, identified by the sheriff’s office as Norgard, the shooter said it was “to stop the threat,” according to the sheriff’s office report.

One of the reports filled out by sheriff's office deputies notes the truck was parked behind the green car in the roadway and another mentions the lights and stereo were still on in the green vehicle after the incident.

A deputy noted in a different report that a witness on scene said there was gun in the truck. The deputy located an unknown type of handgun sitting on the driver’s seat of the truck, according to a sheriff’s office report.

The passenger's statement

Detectives interviewed a woman, who was a passenger in the shooter’s car. The sheriff’s office redacted her identity from reports, citing Marsy's Law.

“He smacked my husband,” the woman said to a deputy on scene as she was escorted away from Norgard after the shooting, according to one of the sheriff's office reports.

The woman was later interviewed by two detectives away from the scene, at a Collier County Sheriff’s Office location.

She told detectives her husband mentioned someone was driving close to the back of his truck when they were on their way home from getting dinner and ice cream.

Upon turning onto 16th Avenue Southwest, the vehicle passed the couple on the left and cut them off, she told detectives.

The vehicle, which was driven by Norgard, stopped quickly and forced her husband to stop his truck to avoid hitting it, the woman said.

The woman told detectives they could not drive around the other vehicle and Norgard got out of his vehicle then was yelling for her husband to get out of their vehicle.

Norgard was waving his arms and saying, “what’s your problem” and “come out here I’m going to beat your ass” and she couldn’t explain why Norgard was so angry, the woman told detectives.

Norgard began to punch her husband in the head, but she was unsure if it was through the window of the truck or if the door was open, the woman told detectives.

She remembered her husband never got out of the truck, according to the sheriff’s office report.

The woman heard two shots then saw Norgard take two steps backwards away from the vehicle and fall to the ground, she told detectives.

She felt her husband was “forced to protect himself from the male (Norgard),” according to the report.

After they were interviewed separately, the woman and her husband were driven home to their residence by a sheriff’s office deputy, according to one of the sheriff’s office incident reports.

Other witness accounts

Investigators interviewed a woman who lived near the site of the shooting as well as four other people who stopped their vehicles after they came upon the scene, according to reports from the sheriff’s office.

None of those five people interviewed saw the actual shooting take place and none of them saw what happened directly before Norgard was shot.

Sarah McCandless told a deputy she was outside of a home about a half-mile from where the shooting took place a few minutes before deputies were dispatched the scene.

She heard tires screeching and observed a smaller car trying to pass a medium-sized truck, according to the sheriff’s office report.

McCandless told the investigator she saw the truck accelerate, swerve in front of the car and brake suddenly forcing the car to slam on its brakes, according to the report.

Several minutes after the two vehicles passed her home, McCandless heard two gunshots, according to the report.

Christian Noseworthy told an investigator he was driving to Publix west on 16th Avenue Southwest when he saw two vehicles in the roadway and a man waving his arms.

Noseworthy stopped and asked the man what happened. Noseworthy told an investigator the man said, “He was beating me, so I shot him,” according to a sheriff’s office incident report.

Noseworthy attempted to help Norgard as he was lying in the road. Norgard never spoke and remained unconscious the entire time Noseworthy was present, according to the report.

The man who flagged Noseworthy down told other people who arrived on scene “the same description of what happened,” Noseworthy told investigators, according to the report.

A woman who was driving behind Noseworthy, Estella Pino, also stopped at the scene of the incident.

She pulled her car onto the shoulder of the road and saw Norgard lying on the road and an older man pacing in the roadway with his hands on his head, according to the report.

Another witness, Koral Alvarez, told an investigator she was driving on 23rd Street Southwest and saw a pickup truck parked in the roadway on 16th Avenue Southwest as she was preparing to turn onto the road.

Alvarez saw a man “drop backwards with his hands kinda in the air for a moment,” according to the report.

She then saw a man outside the truck with his hands over his head pacing back, Alvarez told deputies in the report.

Alvarez remembered hearing the man pacing near the truck say, “why tonight, I can’t believe this happened,” according to the sheriff’s office.

Another woman, Melissa Jackson, also stopped at the scene of the shooting after she turned on 16th Avenue Southwest from 23rd Street Southwest.

Jackson saw Norgard lying on the road and a second man pacing, grabbing his head and leaning on a pickup truck stopped in the roadway, according to the report.

Jackson asked a woman near the pickup truck if the person lying in the road was hit by a vehicle. The woman told Jackson the person in the road assaulted somebody then was shot, according to the report.

Deputies dispatched to the scene provided Norgard with first aid while he was lying face up in the westbound lane of 16th Avenue Southwest.

They traded off performing CPR and giving chest compressions to Norgard, who had no visible weapons on the ground near his body, according to a sheriff’s office reports.

A deputy applied QuickClot to stop the excessive bleeding and provided aid until emergency medical services arrived on scene then Norgard was transported to the hospital.

The Naples Daily News learned the shooter had been cleared of wrongdoing in Norgard’s death in December after reaching out to the sheriff’s office to check in on active homicide investigations.

When asked why the sheriff’s office did not put any information out to the public about the shooter being cleared and the case being closed sooner, Karie Partington, a spokeswoman for the sheriff's office, said because of Marsy’s Law releasable information was limited.

“The only information we could have posted was the fact that the State Attorney’s Office had decided not to pursue criminal charges in a shooting on March 1 on 16th Avenue,” Partington said via email. “As always, our media partners are always welcome to check back on the status of any case.”