A look into 2018 homicide numbers in Lee County

There have been 12 shootings in which someone was hurt or killed since October 1 in Lee County.

Some residents of Southwest Florida are unsettled after the recent surge in violent crime.

“It’s shocking. I’ve been living here since the age of four,” said mother Zolimar Torres.

Torres says she still has faith in Southwest Florida law enforcement even amid the recent rash of violence.

“These are the guys who are here to help you, to serve and protect,” she said.

She brought her three-year-old daughter to the “Coffee with a Cop” event in Cape Coral to instill in her the importance of valuing our officers.

“I wanted her to familiarize herself with them and them with her and make her feel comfortable with law enforcement.”

But those officers have a lot on their hands, a new FDLE report shows crime was down in Lee County in the first half of 2018, but in just two months, we have reported on 12 shootings with victims in the county alone.

We reached out to the Fort Myers Police Department and the Lee County Sheriff’s Office and are waiting on their response.

There have been at least 35 homicides in Lee County in 2018, and 19 of those remain unsolved.

“When we see something we have to tell it,” said Angela McClary with the Fort Myers-Lee County chapter of Parents of Murdered Children.

McClary says the community has an obligation to help. Her son’s 2014 murder is still unsolved.

“It wasn’t the officers that is preventing my son’s case from being solved,” she said. “It’s actually the community, I bring it back to them that whatever they saw that night and know about, they’re not coming forward.”

Cape Coral Master Sergeant Allan Kolak says all agencies in Lee County work together to get these cases solved.

“We work together because it’s a possibility if we apprehend someone it could tie several cases together which could be in several jurisdictions,” he said.

Below is an interactive map marking the cases of gun violence in Lee County in the past two months.

Don’t see the map? Click here to view it.