Escambia County Sheriff discusses unit’s ‘tenacity’ in solving 1998 cold case

Alexa Daly
·2 min read

UPDATE (7:28 p.m.): The Escambia County Sheriff’s Office held a press conference Tuesday morning about the solved 1998 cold case.

Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons spoke on the many years it took to solve this case.

“I think what’s important to note here is that we take these cold cases very serious,” Simmons said. “We don’t stop just because we’ve exhausted all the leads that we had at one particular time.”

“We take a look at new technology and new techniques, sometimes it’s technology, sometimes it’s techniques,” Simmons said. “And as you can see, we had that first bloody fingerprint that we knew that the killer had made that print. But we couldn’t quite the detail enough to where we could identify the individual. We had all this auxiliary information. We had a vague picture, we had a rendering of what it was going to look like. We had all this stuff but we weren’t able to quite identify who it was. And we worked and worked and worked for hours and years upon years.”

“This just goes to just the tenacity of the unit that we have that work these cases,” Simmons said.

Donald Holmes II, right, is accused of killing Steven Davis, left, in a 1998 shooting in the parking lot of the Winn-Dixie on Navy Boulevard. (Photo courtesy of the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office)
Donald Holmes II, right, is accused of killing Steven Davis, left, in a 1998 shooting in the parking lot of the Winn-Dixie on Navy Boulevard. (Photo courtesy of the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office)

ORIGINAL STORY

ESCAMBIA COUNTY, Fla. (WKRG) — The Escambia County Sheriff’s Office has solved a more than two decades-old cold case.

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Donald Holmes II will be charged in the 1998 shooting death of Steven Davis. According to ECSO, Davis was leaving the Winn-Dixie parking lot on Navy Boulevard in his cab when he was shot.

The case was solved after ECSO held its cold case symposium and used the latest technology, which allowed them to get a better image of a bloody fingerprint at the scene. That print led them to Holmes.

Holmes is already serving time in a state prison and will be brought to Escambia County to be tried for Davis’ murder.

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Davis’ family described the cab driver as a “big bear who would give you the shirt off his back.”

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