Marcus Chamblin Trial in Circle K Murder Set for April 8 as Co-Defendant Derrius Bauer Waits Until September

The trial of Derrius Braxton Bauer on a first-degree murder charge in the shooting death of Deon O’Neal Jenkins at a Palm Coast Circle K station in 2019 has been pushed to September to first accommodate the trial of Bauer’s co-defendant, Marcus Chamblin, set for April 8.

Circuit Judge Terence Perkins this morning set Bauer’s docket sounding–the last step before trial–for Aug. 27, with trial scheduled the following week unless the case is resolved by other means. Bauer and his lawyers will have the benefit of the Chamblin trial to devise their own defense strategy.




The Chamblin trial will rely on the same long list of witnesses. It will be one of the more complex and longer criminal trials to occupy the court in recent years. “We would go all the first week and Monday and Tuesday of the following,” Perkins said today.

Jenkins and a passenger were parked at the Circle K station on Palm Coast Parkway and Belle Terre Parkway early the morning of Oct. 12, 2019 when a man from several steps behind the vehicle opened fire with an AK-47 assault-style Draco rifle that Chamblin owned. Jenkins was killed. The passenger, whose identity has not been released, survived. He is expected to testify.

The state’s initial list of potential witnesses numbered 120 people, including members of the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Walterboro, South Carolina, Police Department, the sheriff’s offices of Flagler, St. Johns, Jacksonville and Clay, the Florida Highway Patrol, and numerous lay witnesses. The list is reflective of the complexity of the case and the investigative trail, which took Flagler County sheriff’s detectives across several states.

Chamblin’s attorney, Terence Lenamon, filed several pre-trial motions that Perkins is expected to rule on before the trial begins. The motions reveal key evidence uncovered by the investigation. It includes the fact that law enforcement found firearms and drugs in the car Chamblin and Bauer were driving away from Flagler County. Chamblin was homeless at the time, and living out of Bauer’s car, according to the defense. That police search, the defense argues, was illegal, therefore all its findings should be suppressed.




Evidence also includes a rap video featuring Chamblin amid a crowd, and the Draco firearm (which Chamblin doesn’t hold in the video). “Throughout the video is rap by an individual unrelated to this case who uses language that could be interpreted as offensive and racist,” the defense motion to exclude the video reads. “This includes the offensive and racist word used which starts with an N. This word is used throughout the video.” The defense considers the video prejudicial to its client, and considers the audio to have no bearing on the case. At the least, the defense wants the audio excluded.

Perkins takes a dim view of excluding evidence from trials, but he has in the past excluded prejudicial evidence of that sort, as in the trial of Keith Johansen in October 2021. Johansen was accused of murdering his wife. He was convicted and is serving life in prison. Evidence included internal video footage from his and the victim’s bedroom. Some of that footage included Johansen using the same racist language Chamblin’s lawyer refers to. Perkins agreed to exclude it. Based on that precedent, he is just as likely to split the difference with the rap video, accepting it as evidence but with the sound off.

Both Chamblin and Bauer are charged with first-degree murder (the state will not be seeking the death penalty), attempted second degree murder, and firing into an occupied vehicle. Both are being held at the Flagler County jail. Bauer’s attorney filed a motion to have a bond set for him. He has a $100,000 bond on one charge, no bond on the two graver charges. The motion states Bauer is “not a threat to the community and does not pose a flight risk.”

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant State Attorney Mark Johnson.




Among the numerous other cases on docket sounding today, Perkins heard two other high-profile cases.

Danial Marashi was the man who shot and killed Zaire Roberts at the home of Marashi’s parents in Palm Coast’s R-Section in December 2021. It was a drug deal gone bad. To the displeasure of the sheriff, Marashi was not charged. Two other assailants who had worked with Roberts to pull off the deal were charged with Roberts’s murder, and are now serving long prison sentences (Kwentell Moultrie is serving 45 years, a sentence that includes time for an unrelated crime. Taylor Manjares is serving a 12-year sentence.)

Nevertheless, Marashi, who has a criminal record in Volusia and Flagler counties, faced separate, unrelated charges of his own, including three felony drug charges, a second degree felony charge of aggravated battery, and leaving the scene of a crash with injuries, a third degree felony. A plea settled all cases today, with the aggravated battery charge dismissed and the leaving the scene charge reduced to a felony battery. Perkins sentenced Marashi to a year in prison, with 348 days’ credit for time already served.

The third case involved Marshall Thomas, the former Matanzas High School student accused of sexually assaulting a girl there during class, and, in a separate case, two charges of grand theft of a firearm and an additional charge of grand theft, all felonies. Out on bond, Thomas, now 17, had been attending school in Wisconsin–first in an actual school, then as a home-schooled student–where he was arrested for distributing child porn. The court in Flagler has been seeking his extradition, but he faces charges in Wisconsin, and was undergoing evaluation for competence to stand trial. His attorney, Matt Maguire, told the court today that one evaluation found him competent, with a second evaluation pending.

Perkins issued a no-bond nationwide arrest warrant to be served at the jail where Thomas is being held, with a May 22 status hearing.