The Lee County sheriff says a 28-year-old man has been arrested and charged in the death of the woman found inside a home on Haviland Avenue in Lehigh Acres, the investigation this desk covered on Thursday when nobody would say what it was about

The Lee County Sheriff's Office has arrested a 28-year-old man and accused him of killing the woman found dead inside a house on Haviland Avenue in Lehigh Acres on Thursday morning.

Sheriff Carmine Marceno announced the arrest of Whycliff Longin at a news conference on Friday, WINK News reports. Longin has been booked into the Lee County Jail. WINK, reading from booking records, gives the charges as homicide, murder, dangerous depraved mind without premeditation, and burglary with assault or battery.

Gulf Coast News, the WBBH newsroom, covered the same news conference and gives a different and longer list: homicide, attempted homicide, sexual battery, and burglary with a battery. Its report is credited to assignment editor Layza Pinero Resto. The two lists agree that there is a homicide charge and a burglary charge, and they agree on nothing else. A sexual battery charge appears in one of them and not the other. This desk has not been able to read the booking record itself, for reasons set out at the end of this item, so both lists are published here rather than one being chosen over the other.

All of that is accusation. He has not been tried and he has not been convicted.

What the Sheriff's Office says happened

The account below is the Sheriff's Office account, given by Marceno at the news conference and reported by WINK. No court has tested it.

Marceno said the incident happened shortly before 3 a.m. on Thursday. A woman reported that Longin tried to strangle her. In WINK's account she broke free, got out of the home and called police, and Longin then went out through a back door and into a neighbouring apartment complex.

Gulf Coast News describes the same sequence in a different building. It reports that deputies were called to one side of a duplex on Haviland Avenue South for a domestic disturbance, that the surviving woman told them she woke to find Longin on top of her strangling her, and that she broke free and barricaded herself in the bathroom to call 911. In that account he went to the neighbouring duplex, and it was there that the second woman was found dead and there that he was taken into custody shortly afterwards.

The difference matters for anyone trying to picture what happened on that street. One account has two sides of one duplex. The other has a house and a neighbouring apartment complex. Both have the same road, the same hour and the same two women, and neither outlet is quoting a document this desk can read. The Sheriff's Office has published nothing of its own beyond Thursday's scene statement, so the geography is reported here as unsettled rather than resolved in either direction.

Deputies carried out a safety sweep and found the second woman dead. WINK reports she was found in a bedroom. Investigators determined she had suffered blunt force trauma.

Marceno described the case as a domestic violence case, and said Longin has no known criminal history. He said additional charges could be filed as the investigation continues.

The Sheriff's Office also said, according to WINK, that Longin is a Haitian national who came to the United States seeking asylum in 2024, that a detainer has been placed on him, and that federal authorities are reviewing his immigration status. WINK names the agency that placed the detainer as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. That is the outlet's wording of what the Sheriff's Office said, and this desk repeats it as such rather than adopting it.

Gulf Coast News, covering the same news conference, names the agency as Immigration and Customs Enforcement instead. Those are two different federal agencies with two different jobs, and the two newsrooms do not agree on which of them placed the hold. This desk cannot settle it and is not going to guess. What both accounts have in common, and what is safe to carry, is that the sheriff said Longin is a Haitian national who came seeking asylum and that a federal immigration hold has been placed on him.

The woman who died still has no official name

The Sheriff's Office has not publicly identified her.

Her family identified her to WINK News as Amadette Longin, and described her as a loving mother, sister and aunt who was close to her family. Her niece, Lutiana Longin, told WINK the family spent much of Thursday outside the home waiting to learn what had happened, and said they wanted the process to move so they could mourn her.

The shared surname is in the record and this desk is not going to pretend otherwise, but no agency has stated what the relationship between the two people was. Marceno's description of the case as domestic violence is the only characterisation any authority has given, and it is his.

This is the story this desk could not explain on Thursday

On Thursday morning this desk published a brief saying only that the Sheriff's Office had an active investigation at 30th Street Southwest and Haviland Avenue, that it said there was no threat to the public, and that it had not said what it was investigating. That was the whole of what was public at the time, and it was worth saying plainly that an investigation with no stated subject invites guesses and there was nothing to base one on.

The gaps have now been filled by the agency itself. In the intervening day WINK retitled its original report from an active investigation to a death investigation, the family named the woman who died, and on Friday afternoon the sheriff stood up and named a suspect, gave a sequence of events and gave a cause.

The Sheriff's Office statement from Thursday still stands as the agency's own words on the scene. It said it was working the 2900 block of Haviland Avenue South, that the incident was isolated, that there was no threat to the public, and that all parties were accounted for. The arrest is consistent with that last phrase, and Gulf Coast News's account would explain it: if Longin was taken into custody at the neighbouring duplex shortly after the call, then by the time that statement went out all parties genuinely were accounted for, which is not how the phrase reads if you assume the man was still outstanding.

What this desk could not confirm

Two things, and they are worth stating rather than smoothing over.

The first is the booking record. The Sheriff's Office runs a public arrest-search tool, and the charges in this brief come from WINK's reading of it rather than from this desk reading it. The agency's search endpoint ignored every filter it advertises on this date, returning the same twenty most recent bookings whether asked for this name, for a different name entirely, or for a date range. That list does not contain the name, but it is not a complete roster either, since its booking numbers skip at least nine values, so its silence proves nothing in either direction.

The second was corroboration, and that part has since changed. When this item first went up, WINK News was the only newsroom carrying the arrest, and readers were told so. About four hours later Gulf Coast News published its own report on the same news conference, so two separate Fort Myers newsrooms now have the story and the single-source caveat no longer applies.

What replaced it is a harder problem. The two accounts do not match on the charges, on the buildings, or on which federal agency placed the immigration hold, and every one of those disagreements is carried openly above rather than smoothed into one clean version. The document that would settle the charge list is the booking record, which is the one thing on this story this desk still cannot read.

Update, August 28, 2026, 3.45 p.m. ET. This item published at 3.15 p.m. sourced to WINK News, which was then the only newsroom carrying the arrest, and it said so. Gulf Coast News, the WBBH newsroom, published its own report on the same news conference at 3.13 p.m. and this desk read it on the next breaking watch. Nothing in the original has been removed. Four things have been added, and three of them are disagreements rather than new facts. Gulf Coast News gives the charges as homicide, attempted homicide, sexual battery and burglary with a battery, where WINK, reading booking records, gave homicide, murder, dangerous depraved mind without premeditation, and burglary with assault or battery; both lists now appear and the sexual battery charge, which only one outlet carries, is identified as such. Gulf Coast News places the whole incident at two sides of one duplex and has Longin taken into custody at the neighbouring side shortly afterwards, where WINK had him fleeing into a neighbouring apartment complex; both are stated and the geography is reported as unsettled. Gulf Coast News names the immigration hold as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement one, where WINK named U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; both are stated and neither is adopted. And the passage telling readers that only one newsroom had the story has been rewritten, because it is no longer true. Every fact about Thursday morning that this item published at 3.15 p.m. stands, and the charges remain accusations that no court has tested.