Bunnell Man Sentenced to Death for Stabbing Wife Outside Their Home as Teen Son Watched in 2024

A Flagler County judge on Monday sentenced Jermaine Mandell Williams Sr. to death for stabbing his wife, Yolonda Williams, 19 to 20 times outside their Bunnell home in August 2024 while their 14-year-old son tried to stop the attack. Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols imposed the sentence on Oct. 26, 2026, following a jury's 11-1 recommendation in July.

Williams, who was 52 at the time of his arrest and is now 54, according to local reports, becomes the first person sentenced to death in Flagler County in nearly four decades, FlaglerLive reported. The sentencing hearing itself lasted only a few minutes, but it closes a two-year case in the 7th Judicial Circuit and opens what is likely to be years of appeals.

The attack on South Pine Street

The killing happened shortly after 8 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 2, 2024, in the driveway of a home in the 400 block of South Pine Street in Bunnell, the Flagler County seat. Bunnell police said a resident called 911 to report that a relative was being stabbed, and responders were dispatched at 8:14 a.m. Yolonda Williams, 50, was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Officers found her husband nearby and arrested him at the scene.

Prosecutors told jurors that surveillance video showed Williams walk into the house, come back out with an 8-inch chef's knife and attack his wife in the street. The couple's 14-year-old son saw the attack and tried to intervene. Williams' father, who lived nearby, held his son at gunpoint and threatened to shoot him if he did not stop, and Williams then stepped away from the victim, according to police and prosecutors.

In the hours after the killing, Williams told detectives that he and his wife had been fighting for weeks and that he had been sleeping in his truck in the driveway, according to an arrest account reported by News 6. He said he wanted to reconcile, that she turned down his offer to help with her car that morning, and that something she said pushed him over the edge. He told detectives he took a knife from a kitchen drawer and stabbed her several times, and claimed he blacked out.

At the time, Williams was on probation for charges stemming from a 2022 domestic violence incident involving his wife, and police said he had a history of domestic violence against her.

A 20-minute verdict and an 11-1 recommendation

The case went to trial in July 2026. After a two-day trial, a Flagler County jury deliberated about 20 minutes before finding Williams guilty of first-degree murder on July 17.

The same jury of 10 women and two men returned for a two-day penalty phase. On July 22, jurors voted 11-1 to recommend death. FlaglerLive reported that jurors were unanimous on each of four aggravating factors presented by prosecutors, which included that Williams had a prior felony conviction and was on felony probation at the time of the killing, that he had previously been convicted of a violent felony, and that the murder was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel. During the penalty phase, an expert testified that Williams killed his wife to preserve his sense of himself as a man, according to FlaglerLive's coverage.

After the recommendation, State Attorney R.J. Larizza of the 7th Judicial Circuit said the verdict brought the case "one step closer to making justice a reality for Yolanda Williams, her family and the citizens of the 7th Circuit," and said his office would continue to pursue the death penalty.

Judge Nichols then held a Spencer hearing in August, the stage of a Florida capital case where the judge hears additional evidence and argument before deciding between death and life in prison without parole.

The case moved through these stages:

Why an 11-1 vote was enough

Under the law Florida followed from 2017 until 2023, an 11-1 jury vote would not have permitted a death sentence. That changed in April 2023, when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill 450, which lets a judge impose death when at least eight of 12 jurors recommend it. The Legislature acted after the jury in the Parkland school shooting case could not unanimously agree on death for Nikolas Cruz, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2022.

Florida now has the lowest jury threshold for a death sentence of any state that uses capital punishment. Juries must still unanimously find at least one aggravating factor before a death recommendation can be considered. In Williams' case, the jury cleared both bars by wide margins.

The sentence adds to a crowded death row. As of early October 2026, 234 people were awaiting execution in Florida, according to published tallies. The state carried out 19 executions in 2025, the most by any state in at least 15 years, and had already carried out its 10th lethal injection of 2026 by mid-July.

Reaction from law enforcement and the family

Bunnell Police Chief David Brannon credited the work of Bunnell police, the Flagler County Sheriff's Office and the State Attorney's Office. "No verdict or sentence restores what was stolen from them, but we hope today's outcome provides a measure of justice," Brannon said in a statement after the jury's recommendation, referring to Yolonda Williams' family.

Family and friends of Yolonda Williams prayed together after the death recommendation was announced, Yahoo News reported. After his conviction, Williams wrote a letter titled "My Superwoman" about his wife and told his children not to let their hatred of him fill them with negative thoughts, according to that report.

What's next

Every Florida death sentence is reviewed directly by the Florida Supreme Court, and Williams' case now enters that appellate process, which typically takes years before any death warrant could be considered. Williams is expected to be moved from the Flagler County jail to the custody of the Florida Department of Corrections and placed on death row.

For Flagler County, part of the 7th Judicial Circuit along with Volusia, Putnam and St. Johns counties, the sentence is a rare one: if FlaglerLive's count holds, Monday marked the first time in nearly 40 years that a Flagler judge has sent a defendant to death row.