A 19-year-old Georgia man who fired 7 shots at a crowd during Spring Break last year was found guilty of Attempted Manslaughter and two other charges Thursday, State Attorney Larry Basford announced.
A jury deliberated 17 minutes before finding Zyion Christopher Robinson guilty of Attempted Manslaughter, with the special finding that he used a Firearm. That makes it a Second-Degree Felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Jurors also found the defendant guilty of Discharging a Firearm in Public and Improper Display of a Firearm. Circuit Court Judge set sentencing for August 14.
The defendant was arrested April 11, 2025, after he fired 7 shots from a Checkers drive-through toward a group of people he had a confrontation with minutes earlier in a different parking lot. No one was injured.
Prosecutors Jeffrey Moore and Andrew Eppling called 6 witnesses – including 2 co-defendants – and presented evidence in which the defendant admitted firing the gun – to prove that the defendant fired the shots toward a crowd that included a man who had “bested” him in an earlier confrontation.
A key witness was a local woman who was at the Checkers drive-through only yards away with her 10-year-old son in the car. A key piece of evidence was video that showed a green laser from the defendant’s weapon that was pointed toward the crowd, not into the air as the defendant claimed.
“It comes down to a laser, a momma, and an angry young man,” Moore told jurors. “She had her son in the car and tunnel vision locked in on that shooter. She knew where he was pointing that gun – downrange at the crowd at Zaxby’s.”
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“Here’s why he would do that,” Moore continued. “He had been bested. He had agreed to a fight in the parking lot of Wal-Mart and he got bested there, pushed to the ground, his pride hurt, angry. He wasn’t going to be bested again with the gun he had.”
The evidence showed the defendant drove to Panama City Beach that weekend to meet and family and friends here for Spring Break. They went to the beach behind Pineapple Willie’s and a verbal argument broke out between them and another group before police moved in dispersed the entire crowd.
The defendant’s group went to their car, parked at Wal-Mart, and were re-engaged by the group they had argued with on the beach. It was decided a “no gun” fight would be held between the defendant and someone in the other group.
The fight started right there. Witnesses said the defendant was not faring well and went to the ground at one point before police again moved through the crowd dispersed.
The defendant walked to the nearby Checkers and soon noticed a crowd gathering in the Zaxby’s parking lot nearby. In that crowd were the people he had the earlier confrontation with. He said he wanted his gun from the car.
A surveillance video shows the defendant and a female co-defendant walking down the Checker’s drive-through and stopping beside the car belonging to the local witness with her child in the car.
“He’s a hurt angry young man and he needs his gun,” Eppling told jurors in his closing argument as he narrated the video. “And he’s going to make sure they don’t run across him again. He actually fires it 7 times, he’s angry and his adrenaline is flowing.”
And while the defendant later told police he fired into the air to scare away the nearby crowd, Eppling played the video in slow motion pointed out that the laser sight on the gun was hitting objects straight out, and the muzzle flashes went that way as well.
Later, when police approached the defendant, he said, “I’m your guy.” He admitted to the shooting but claimed he fired into the air. He initially claimed he threw the firearm into a lake, then said it was thrown into a sewer drain, then told police where he had hidden it. They recovered it from behind a retaining wall.
Basford thanked the Panama City Beach Police Department for its investigation in the middle of a chaotic Spring Break night.
For more information, contact Mike Cazalas at mike.cazalas@sa14.fl.gov, or call 850-381-7454.