‘I kept trying to get away’: Prosecutors drop charges against Broward man who claimed self-defense in fatal road-rage shooting

A hair salon owner heading to work on a July morning was suddenly the target of a racist, road rage-fueled pursuit  in Coral Springs that ended in the death of the man chasing him and his own arrest, attorneys say.

Melvin Foster said he shot Thomas Sconzo that day in 2021 because he was afraid for his life, claiming self-defense under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law. On Wednesday, nearly three years after Broward Sheriff’s deputies arrested Foster, prosecutors dropped the manslaughter charges against him.

Sconzo, 56, had chased Foster, 42, who is Black, calling him the N-word and threatening to kill him, defense attorneys argued. Then, as he drove beside Foster, he appeared to reach for a gun, though deputies later searched the car and found none. Foster shot at Sconzo’s car, killing him. When he called 911, deputies arrested him on second-degree murder charges, later reduced to manslaughter.

In the years following, data from Sconzo’s car and a defense motion to dismiss brought new evidence to light, including the testimonies of three witnesses who prosecutors had never interviewed. The Broward State Attorney’s Office reviewed the case and decided to drop it.

“Most of them eventually did the right thing,” Foster’s defense attorney, Michael Dutko, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel after the hearing Wednesday. “But it took a long time and a lot of money and a lot of heartache from Melvin Foster for them to get to that point.”

Speaking on Foster’s behalf, he said that his client wanted to “express his gratitude, love, and appreciation for his family and friends who remained supportive of him through this difficult and trying ordeal.”

Foster also thanked his legal team, including Val Rivera, a private investigator who found “important witnesses and information that law enforcement either ignored or simply failed to follow up on.”

The State Attorney’s Office referred to its close-out memo for comment.

“Based on the totality of circumstances regarding the testimony of the additional witnesses, the data from Sconzo’s vehicle, and the victim’s prior arrest history, the State had very little likelihood of successfully overcoming its required legal burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence the Defendant’s claim of immunity based on Florida’s Stand Your Ground law at a hearing or trial,” the memo concludes.

The road-rage chase

It began as an average Wednesday morning: Foster, of Coral Springs, had just finished a physical therapy appointment, according to Dutko’s motion to dismiss. He started heading down University Drive towards the hair salon he owns in Tamarac when he passed the scene of a car crash that forced people to merge into one lane. Ahead of him in the road sat a dark red Ford Mustang that didn’t budge.

Foster “tapped” the horn of his truck to get the driver’s attention, the motion states. According to the Broward Sheriff’s Office probable cause affidavit and memo from prosecutors, he told the 911 operator he had cut Sconzo off.

In response, Sconzo put his hand out the window and gave Foster the finger before continuing down the road, according to the motion. Then he suddenly braked in front of Foster, forcing him to slam his own brakes and switch lanes to avoid a crash.

Sconzo then moved back into the lane behind Foster, the motion says, leading Foster to switch lanes again. But Sconzo sped up until he was next to Foster and yelled through his open window, “F*** you,” calling Foster the N-word. Then he sped up and cut Foster off again, the motion says, before stopping his car in front of Foster and motioning for him to pull over.

“In great fear for his life,” Foster kept going, according to the motion. He reached the shopping plaza where he had planned to go to his hair salon, but he was so afraid Sconzo would ambush him that he continued on. Finally, he thought, he had lost Sconzo.

But he had not. Sconzo re-emerged. Again, he pulled up next to Foster, calling him the N-word and threatening to kill him, according to the motion. As Foster tried to get around him, he saw that Sconzo was holding a dark object in his hand, which Foster feared was a gun.

Foster took his own gun from his center console. When Sconzo pulled up next to him yet again, leaning towards him and pointing at him, Foster feared that he was about to be shot, the motion states. He fired two shots at Sconzo’s passenger door. When he saw in his rear-view mirror that the Mustang had stopped, he drove a bit further, then pulled over, removed the magazine from his gun, and called 911.

“I just fired my weapon at this guy in Tamarac,” he said, according to the memo. “I don’t know if I hit him … he kept coming up to me. I kept trying to get away.”

So did Sconzo.

“I just got shot,” he told the operator, according to the memo. “I’m dying. I’m in a maroon Mustang.”

A helicopter airlifted Sconzo to Broward Health Medical Center, and he was pronounced dead later that morning.

When Foster recounted to deputies what had happened, they arrested him on charges of second-degree murder, the motion states. He was later released on bond with an ankle monitor that he would wear for the next two years. A few weeks after his arrest, prosecutors officially filed manslaughter charges against him.

Incomplete case?

Three witnesses spoke with the Broward Sheriff’s Office, all of them saying that the aggressor in the chase was the Mustang, while one recounted the racial slurs and threats, according to the motion. None were included in the prosecutors’ discovery.

Court records revealed that Sconzo had a history of domestic violence; the Sheriff’s Office had previously arrested and charged him with grabbing his 87-year-old mother by the throat. His sister later petitioned for a restraining order. But it is unclear whether deputies conducted a background check on him after the Coral Springs incident.

In response to questions over its handling of the case, the Sheriff’s Office said in a statement, “Law enforcement officers make arrests based on the law, evidence recovered in the case and probable cause. Prosecutors have the final say over whether criminal charges are ultimately filed, changed or dropped.”

The first witness, another driver, said he had seen Sconzo’s Mustang chasing Foster’s truck. When he saw news reports that the driver of the truck had been arrested, he called the Sheriff’s Office non-emergency number, according to the motion, explaining that he was a witness and that the aggressor was the Mustang.

“Disturbingly, no one from law enforcement ever followed up nor contacted him,” the motion says. Later, after the defense listed him as a witness, prosecutors obtained his testimony.

A delivery man unloading his truck also saw the Mustang driving recklessly and spoke with deputies at the scene, the motion says, citing body-worn camera footage; that man was not included as a witness.

The third witness, a friend of Foster’s, had been on the phone with him during the chase. She told a sheriff’s detective in a sworn statement that she had heard the things Sconzo had yelled at him. She was also not included as a state witness, according to the motion, but spoke with prosecutors after the defense listed her as a witness.

Over a year later, detectives retrieved data from the Mustang’s on-board data recorder, which corroborated many of Foster’s claims, the motion to dismiss states. At one point, Sconzo’s speed had reached 109 miles per hour.

“At the time of homicide ASA’s filing decision, she did not have a statement” from any of the three witnesses, the State Attorney’s Office memo states, “nor did the State have the onboard data from Sconzo’s Mustang. In addition, the police had (a separate) 911 call, but did not follow up with what (the witness) saw.”

The motion to dismiss, filed last November, was set to be heard in January, but delayed again due to a medical emergency. In the meantime, however, multiple prosecutors reviewed the case, Dutko said. They met with Sconzo’s family members on March 15, telling them that they were unlikely to succeed against the motion.

Voicemails left with several of Sconzo’s family members were not returned Wednesday.

Dutko, who has also represented police officers, thinks that the investigators assigned to the case were too quick to affirm what they already thought had happened.

“I think, had all of the facts been gathered before they rushed to judgment, perhaps no charge would have been filed,” he said.

At the same time, he said, Foster’s case was unique because he essentially did everything right. Defendants claiming self-defense in other cases might not see the same outcome.

“From that day, from the moment that the event happened, Melvin Foster conducted himself in a way that somebody who has a legitimate defense or explanation should do,” Dutko said. “And that is, he pulled his truck over. He made that gun safe. He called law enforcement on a cell phone, put the gun in a spot in the vehicle, waited outside the vehicle, flagged down law enforcement when they got there and said, ‘I’m the guy that just called, the gun is in the truck, it’s on the console.’ … And then he provided them a lot of information. Some of it they noted and some of it they simply ignored, which is unfortunate.”