A Lee County judge ordered the man charged in the Winkler Avenue killing held without bond, and said he is subject to an immigration detainer

Money & World

The Editorial Team · July 31, 2026

Two closed hardback books lying flat on a plain pale grey surface, one black and one red, the red one spelling the word LAW in raised wooden letters, with no people or setting in view.

Photo: Tara Winstead / Pexels

What it changes

This site has carried this case twice, and the reason to carry it a third time is that a judge has now applied a legal standard to it in open court rather than an agency filing a charge. Those are different things and the difference is the story. On Monday the Fort Myers Police Department had one person in custody and named nobody. On Tuesday the department named the man it says turned himself in and stated the charge. Neither of those steps required anyone outside the department to agree with it. A pretrial detention hearing does. Under Florida law a defendant charged with a non-capital offence is ordinarily entitled to release on reasonable conditions, and holding someone without bond requires the state to persuade a judge that no set of conditions would be sufficient. The state has now done that, and the judge has stated his reasons on the record. That is the first independent check this case has passed, and it is why this brief exists rather than an edit to the last one. The practical effect for the defendant is that he stays in the Lee County Jail while the case runs, rather than pending a further hearing. The second change is the immigration detainer, and it should be read narrowly, because it is the detail most likely to be misunderstood. A detainer is a request from a federal agency that a local jail hold someone briefly after the point at which they would otherwise be released. It does not add a charge, it does not affect the murder case, and here it changes nothing at all in the near term, because the no-bond order means there is no release date for a detainer to attach to. Everything else remains unresolved and is worth stating plainly. The account of what happened on Winkler Avenue is what investigators say they believe, not a finding by any court, and the description of the relationship between the two people and of what the woman was doing that morning comes from the same investigative account. A second-degree murder charge is what an agency concluded it could file. No plea has been entered, no trial date is public, and the standard a judge applied on Thursday to decide whether to release someone is far below the one a prosecution must meet to convict. The woman who died has still not been publicly identified, more than a week on, and that silence is permitted rather than accidental: Florida's Marsy's Law provision lets victims and their families withhold identifying information, so her name may never be released at all. Nothing is being asked of residents near Winkler Avenue. No road closure, no area to avoid and no continuing threat has been announced by any agency, and this brief carries no breaking flag because the case is moving through a court rather than through a neighbourhood.

A Lee County judge has ordered the man charged over the fatal shooting of a woman at an apartment complex on Winkler Avenue held in the Lee County Jail without bond.

Brinkley Hill of WINK News reported the hearing on Thursday, July 30.

Willian Rosa Do'Amaral, who Fort Myers police say turned himself in to law enforcement, is charged with second-degree murder. This site covered the shooting on Monday, when the department had said only that one person was in custody, and the charge on Tuesday, when it named him.

He was returned to court on Thursday for a pretrial detention hearing, appearing in person in a jail uniform and handcuffs rather than by video.

Judge Robert J. Branning ordered him held without bond. The judge is reported to have said that the defendant poses a threat of harm to the community, that the facts of the case show a disregard for community safety, and that no conditions of release would be sufficient to protect the community and prevent physical harm.

The judge also said that Do'Amaral is in the country illegally and that he will be held on an immigration detainer. That statement is the judge's, made in court, and is reported here as such.

Prosecutors are described as continuing to build the case.

Investigators say the woman was shot as she was leaving for work, and that she and the man charged had previously been in a relationship. That is the investigative account, and no court has tested it.

The woman who died has not been publicly identified.

No plea has been reported and no trial date has been made public. Everything above describing the shooting is an allegation.

No public docket entry for Thursday's hearing could be retrieved for this item. The Lee County Clerk of Courts records portal did not respond when queried, so no case number is cited here.

Where we read it: Brinkley Hill at WINK News. Read their story.

The document: No public filing has been released.

A Lee County judge ordered the man charged in the Winkler Avenue killing held without bond, and said he is subject to an immigration detainer

The Lee County Sheriff's Office says multiple search warrants have been served in the Lehigh Acres investigation, and that it cannot confirm whether the 21st Street Southwest home is connected to the killing of 15-year-old Matthew Stmarc

Fire crews contained a blaze at a Fort Myers home built in 1926 that had been divided into an efficiency, and the fire department reported no injuries

The rip current statement covering Lee County's Gulf beaches has been extended by a day and now runs through Saturday evening