Resident Involved in Drug Deal Gone Bad Killed Zaire Roberts After Getting Shot, Reports Show

He did not say that he’d shot another man, Zaire Roberts, who’d allegedly been among the people trying to rob him: Kwentel Lakelvrick Moultrie, a 23-year-old resident of 129 Brittany lane in Palm Coast, and Moultrie’s girlfriend Taylor Renee Manjarres, a 19-year-old resident of 19 Luther Drive in Palm Coast.

Roberts was killed that night. Moultrie and Manjarres were arrested Friday and booked at the Flagler County jail Friday on charges of second degree murder and armed burglary. (See: “Palm Coast Man and Woman Are Arrested on 2nd Degree Murder Charges in Killing of Zaire Roberts.”)

Under Florida law, when a person is killed as a result of others committing a felony, those individuals may be convicted of murder even if they did not directly cause the person’s death. The case has eerie similarities to that of Brandon Washington, who is serving life in prison following convictions on, among other charges, a home invasion robbery and the death of an accomplice in the act: a home invasion on Palm Copast’s Pheasant Lane where the intended victim, Sean Christopher Adams, shot and killed Rashawn Pugh, an associate of Washington’s.




According to Moultrie’s and Manjarres’s arrest reports, the December 29 plan had all started with an attempted drug deal, the common thread between most of the homicides and murders in Palm Coast over the past several years. The following account is based on those reports and other documents.

Danial has twice been arrested in Volusia County (in whose records he’s listed as Danail): once on charges of pot possession of more than 20 grams, and in 2019 on a felony charge of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.

He and Moultrie had earlier that day negotiated a drug deal, including price, quantity and location. The two men and Manjarres all met at Ralph carter Park in the R-Section at 4:30 p.m.–the park immediately adjacent to Rymfire Elementary. (Drug trafficking in a public park or near a school is an automatic first-degree felony.) Palm Coast has wired the park with surveillance cameras, as it has all its parks.

From there, Moultrie and Manjarres got in their blue Kia and followed Danial back to his parents’ home barely half a mile away. Manjarres went in to use the bathroom, and while in the house, Danial “flashed a large sum of cash in front of” her. Moultrie did not go in the house at that point. Manjarres went back out and she and Moultrie drove off.

Negotiations continued by text between Moultrie and Danial.




At 9:16 p.m., or 18 minutes before the 911 call, Moultrie and Manjarres picked up Zaire Roberts, 23, at an apartment at Palm Pointe Apartments. That’s not where Roberts had told the Department of Corrections he’d be: he’d been released from prison in Miami-Dade three months earlier after a seven-year sentence for shooting a man in Palm Coast in 2015. His address, as far as DOC was concerned, was in Hopewell, Ga. But Roberts was not on probation, according to the judge’s sentence. He was free to be where he chose.

Detectives were able to place Moultrie and Manjarres at the apartment complex off State Road 100 in Bunnell by using their smartphone data, which had been subpoenaed.

Nine minutes later, the Kia and its three occupants were back at the Regent Lane home, where two of them would remain for the next 17 minutes, and a third would never leave alive. Manjarres called Danial from the car, then went in the house while Moultrie and Roberts stayed outside. Manjarres then spent several minutes speaking to Moultrie on the phone, from within the house. The report doesn’t detail that moment. Majares is presumably in Danial’s company.

Danial’s parents were home at the time. The arrest report’s timeline is again vague at that point, stating only that Roberts and Moultrie made their way to the door and went in. It’s not clear who let them in. A Sheriff’s release states that “Manjarres distracted the resident while Kwentel and Roberts entered the home.” The resident would have been one of Danial’s parents, since Danial himself was upstairs at that moment.

Danial was perhaps not expecting the men to enter the home or come upstairs. Based on what he told detectives, once he heard someone walk upstairs, he grabbed a Glock firearm “from his sock drawer in the dresser” and walked into the hallway only to see Roberts pointing a gun at his face. Danial “slapped the gun down and away from him and was shot twice,” in the hip and the leg.

Danial shot Roberts, killing him.

Moultrie, who’d been making his way up the stairs, ran back down and out of the house. He was armed. Once outside he fired one shot at the house before getting into the Kia and speeding off. He left Manjarres behind. She ran out soon after, and kept going on foot in the same direction as the car, east on Regent.

At 9:37 p.m., Moultrie called a woman to tell her, using Roberts’s street name, that “Deuce was shot.” Manjarres was by then in the car, crying.




The next day deputies executed a traffic stop on Manjarres and brought her to the courthouse, where the Sheriff’s Office has its temporary offices, for an interview. Her mother and father spoke with her first, according to her arrest report.

“How could you act like this?” her mother asked her. “Someone died.”

“You better not have said anything,” Manjarres is quoted as replying. She then silenced her mother, motioning to the surveillance camera in the interview room, and repeatedly told her to stop talking. Her father asked her if she had proof that she had “nothing to do with it.” Manjarres said no.

Neither the arrest reports nor the sheriff’s release detail how Moultrie was arrested, or where. The release refers to an investigation led by lead Detective Sarah Scalia, who spoke with “numerous people, reviewed hours of surveillance footage, served more than 20 search warrants and subpoenas, completed more than 15 preservation orders involving social media accounts, electronic accounts and mobile devices, reviewed 9-1-1 call recordings from the night of the home invasion and canvassed multiple neighborhoods to gather information and evidence to solve this case.”

“This was a difficult case made more difficult because the home invasion victim was not immediately forthcoming and detectives had to use all investigative means at their disposal to solve this case,” Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly said, referring to Danial. “This crime occurred because the victim was a drug dealer. Because if he was not selling drugs, this crime likely would not have occurred. But, sometimes in law enforcement, you have to work with the devil to get the other devils involved in a crime.”

Moultrie was out on bond at the time of his arrest. He faces a first-degree felony rape charge involving a minor. That case is pending. His bond was revoked.