By DON FLETCHER
News Staff Writer
An Atmore man, one of four people arrested more than five years ago in connection to the fatal shooting of a Florida man and the shooting of another man who survived his wounds, was recently convicted by an Escambia County, Fla. jury and sentenced by a Florida judge to serve life-plus-30-years in prison.
Christopher Alan Stacey, 42, who is listed on court papers and jail records as a resident of Atmore, was found guilty on one count each of second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder, announced the state attorney’s office for Florida’s First Judicial Circuit.
According to court documents and published reports, Stacey shot Troy Boutwell and Dalton Davis on June 3, 2018, at the Walnut Hill residence of Stacey’s ex-wife, Jessica Nicole Thomas, just off Escambia County Road 164, in the Walnut Hill community. Davis died from his injuries, and Boutwell appeared to be dead.
Testimony and forensics showed that Stacey, Thomas, Stacey’s son Christopher James Logan Stacey, and Alexis Ileene Shiffner Cain loaded the victims into the bed of Boutwell’s truck and drove them to Brushy Creek, where it flows under Deere Creek Road just outside Atmore. They drove the truck into the creek and left the two men for dead.
Boutwell was able to crawl from the truck and flag down a motorist, who reported the encounter to Atmore police. The critically wounded man told investigators he was shot on the couch in the living room of Thomas’s home, which is about nine miles from where the truck was located. (Boutwell died in a single-vehicle wreck near Century, Fla. in 2021.)
Once it was determined the actual shootings had taken place inside Florida, the case was turned over to authorities there.
Christopher Alan Stacey, who at first claimed the shootings were in self-defense, was originally indicted for first-degree premeditated murder and attempted first-degree premeditated murder. Thomas, Christopher James Logan Stacey and Cain were charged with being accessories after the fact to first-degree premeditated murder.
Thomas and Cain entered guilty pleas in 2019, while the younger Stacey pleaded no contest in 2019. Each of the three is awaiting sentencing and faces up to 30 years in prison.