Car Wash Held 75 Percent At Fault For A Customer's Fatal Shooting

Bobby Hopkins Jr. pulled into the Swamp Car Wash at 912 East University Avenue in Gainesville on May 22, 2021. He had been on the lot about 22 minutes, washing his car, when a dispute with an acquaintance ended in gunfire and he was shot in the chest. He called 911 himself at about 12:46 p.m. A friend drove him to UF Health Shands Hospital, where he died. He left two young children. Eugene Javon Patrick was convicted of second-degree murder in the shooting in May 2023.

Four months before Hopkins was killed, in January 2021, another man had been shot dead at or just outside the same car wash. Nothing about the property changed in between. There were no security cameras on the lot, no fence and no gate, and the owner, Kokomo Key Properties, Inc., hired nobody to watch the place.

The mother of Hopkins' two children sued Kokomo Key Properties in March 2022 in the Circuit Court for Alachua County (case No. 01-2022-CA-000762), suing on her own and as personal representative of his estate. The complaint argued the car wash sat in a high-crime area with a documented history of shootings, aggravated assaults, batteries, drug sales and robberies, that the company therefore owed its customers reasonable precautions against foreseeable criminal attacks, and that it took none. A security expert retained for the case concluded the property needed cameras, fencing and a gate. Kokomo Key Properties answered that Hopkins had been engaged in criminal activity known to be dangerous on the premises and had assumed the risk of it. Douglas J. McCarron, the partner at The Haggard Law Firm, P.A. who tried the case, told reporters there was no evidence Hopkins was doing anything but washing his car.

The trial ran three days. After roughly three hours of deliberation, the jury found the car wash negligent and, on Wednesday, December 6, 2023, awarded $3,750,000 to each of Hopkins' two children plus $9,000 for his funeral, $7,509,000 altogether. Jurors then assigned 75 percent of the fault to the car wash and 25 percent to Hopkins. McCarron said he did not know what drove the 25 percent, though surveillance video from across the street suggested Hopkins may have been the one who initiated contact with the man who shot him. Florida's comparative negligence statute cuts a recovery by the claimant's own share of the fault, which leaves about $5.63 million of the verdict.

By the time of the verdict the lot finally had what the case said it should have had all along. Security cameras, a fence and a gate were in place, the business had changed hands, and the sign out front read 912 Car Wash.

Kokomo Key Properties appealed to Florida's First District Court of Appeal (No. 1D2024-1060). James C. Blecke joined McCarron for the family, along with Bryan S. Gowdy and Nicholas P. McNamara of Creed & Gowdy, P.A.; three firms appeared for the car wash, among them Carlton Fields. The court heard argument on October 14, 2025 and affirmed per curiam ten days later, on October 24, 2025, leaving the judgment in place.