Jurors convicted Shaun Runyon after prosecutors traced his movements from a workplace fight to a rental house where three co-workers were killed.
BARTOW, Fla. — A trip across Central Florida after a fight with his supervisor became one of the prosecution’s clearest pieces of evidence against Shaun Runyon, whose movements before three 2021 killings were reconstructed through purchases, vehicles, surveillance footage and his own statements.
Runyon’s case is now one day from its formal sentencing. A Polk County jury found the 44-year-old Pennsylvania electrician guilty Sept. 10 of three counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted second-degree murder. Prosecutors then asked the same jury to recommend death. On Sept. 26, jurors instead chose life in prison without parole, a recommendation Florida law requires the judge to follow. Sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 22.
The prosecution’s case reached back to the early hours of Oct. 1, 2021, when Runyon and supervisor Kevin Lanusse argued while working on a Florida electrical project. The men were part of a Pennsylvania crew doing contract work connected to Publix. Authorities said Runyon punched Lanusse during the dispute and left the job. The remaining workers believed he was going back to Pennsylvania. What followed, according to evidence later described in court, moved in the opposite direction and eventually brought him back to the house where the crew was staying.
Investigators said Runyon drove roughly 70 miles toward Tampa International Airport and left a work vehicle there. He rented a Nissan Versa and went to a Target store, where surveillance evidence showed a shopping cart containing an orange aluminum baseball bat. Trial reporting said he also bought a prepaid cellphone and removed the SIM card from his work phone. Prosecutors later said he obtained clothing and shoes and switched a license plate onto the rental car. Each step was presented not as an isolated errand but as part of a sequence the state argued demonstrated planning.
By the morning of Oct. 2, Runyon had returned to the Davenport area. The rental house was in a resort development in unincorporated Polk County, a temporary home for members of the electrical crew. That setting mattered because Runyon knew the residence, the people inside it and their work patterns. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said soon after the killings that Runyon knew co-workers would be sleeping after overnight work. At trial, prosecutors used that knowledge to support the first-degree murder charges.
Authorities said Dewlon Donell, 46, and Lanusse, 41, were attacked while asleep. Gregory Dolezal, 41, was also assaulted and died after making it toward the front porch. The state said a baseball bat and knife were used in the attacks. A fourth co-worker, Albert Read, was struck but survived. Three other occupants, including a child who was 7 at the time, got out without being physically injured. The Sheriff’s Office described the scene as exceptionally violent, but the essential fact presented to jurors was that three men died and a fourth was attacked.
The physical scene was only part of the state’s proof. An arrest affidavit said Runyon noticed an interior security camera facing the rear entrance and adjusted it after entering. Prosecutors relied on video and other records from the hours before the killings to establish where he traveled and what he bought. Evidence concerning the rental car, the abandoned work vehicle and phone activity helped connect those movements. The state argued that the pattern undermined any suggestion that the fatal attacks were an immediate continuation of the job-site argument.
Runyon left the rental after the attacks. Trial accounts said vacationers nearby saw him carrying a bloodied bat as he headed toward a vehicle. He later went to the home of a Publix employee seeking help for an injury to his right wrist, according to evidence summarized by local news reports. He was advised to seek hospital treatment. Detectives found him at a hospital after law enforcement had launched a manhunt. His statements to investigators then became another major piece of the case.
In those statements, Runyon described beliefs that prosecutors and investigators said were unsupported by evidence. He claimed co-workers had sexually assaulted him and were linked to a cartel. Investigators said they found no evidence of such an assault. The prosecution used the work dispute and the objective timeline of purchases and travel as a different explanation for the events. The defense later used the unusual claims for another purpose, arguing that they were signs of a serious delusional condition relevant to punishment.
That distinction — between what happened and how Runyon’s state of mind should affect his sentence — shaped the trial’s second phase. The guilt phase ended Sept. 10 with convictions on all three first-degree murder counts and attempted second-degree murder for the attack on the surviving co-worker. Once those verdicts were returned, prosecutors no longer had to prove who committed the killings. Instead, the courtroom turned to the narrower but consequential question of whether the murders should bring a death sentence.
Mental-health testimony dominated much of the defense presentation. Experts described delusional beliefs and a history of substance abuse. A psychologist testified that Runyon had experienced severe emotional disturbance and that drug use could have compounded his condition. Family members told jurors about episodes from before the killings in which Runyon voiced beliefs that people were threatening or watching him. His sister described a call in which he said people in trees were trying to shoot him; a photograph he sent showed only leaves, she testified.
Runyon’s mother told jurors she believed her son had been in a better period before the Florida trip. She said he was clean, active in church and had asked her to attend with him. The defense offered such testimony as mitigation — evidence that could persuade jurors that life without parole was sufficient despite the convictions. It did not ask jurors to forget the victims or erase the verdicts. It asked them to distinguish permanent imprisonment from execution.
The state responded by returning to the chronology. Prosecutors argued that Runyon’s recollection was detailed and that his actions showed decision-making rather than an inability to control himself. They emphasized the distance traveled, the bat purchase, the rented vehicle, the phone changes and the return to a house where he knew the occupants. In closing arguments, the state also focused on the fact that two victims were asleep when attacked. The prosecution’s theory was that the steps before the killings and the conduct afterward demonstrated calculation.
Jurors nevertheless declined to recommend death. Under Florida law, at least eight of 12 jurors must vote for a death recommendation once the required aggravating findings are made. If fewer than eight do so, the recommendation is life without parole. The statute further provides that a judge must impose life when that is the jury’s recommendation. The result means the upcoming hearing is not a renewed death-penalty contest on the three murder counts.
The case has taken five years to reach that point. Runyon was arrested after the Oct. 2, 2021, attacks and indicted later that month. His trial began Aug. 31, 2026, in Bartow. Prosecutors presented the chronological evidence accumulated by investigators, while the defense contested the state’s interpretation of his mental condition. The jury first resolved guilt and then spent additional days hearing evidence that would not have changed the verdicts but could change the punishment.
Lanusse, Donell and Dolezal had come to Florida for work, not as permanent residents of the community where they died. The Sheriff’s Office identified Lanusse as being from Effort, Pennsylvania, Donell from Baltimore and Dolezal from Akron, Ohio. Their shared temporary housing was a practical arrangement for an out-of-state crew. In the prosecution’s account, it also meant Runyon knew exactly where to find men with whom he had been working only hours earlier.
The bat became a particularly visible object in the trial because prosecutors could place its purchase between the job-site confrontation and the killings. But the state’s case did not rest on that object alone. Jurors heard a broader narrative built from surveillance, travel, phones, vehicles, the crime scene, Runyon’s injuries and his interviews with detectives. Together, those pieces supported the prosecution’s argument that the killings were premeditated rather than a single uncontrolled fight.
The long chain of evidence that prosecutors used to establish premeditation has already served its central legal purpose: jurors found Runyon guilty of three first-degree murders. His next court appearance, scheduled for Oct. 22, will concern punishment rather than proof, with life without parole required on the murder counts after the jury declined to recommend death.
Author note: Last updated Oct. 21, 2026.