18-year-old vanished at his birthday party 9 years ago, Florida cops say. Now DJ sentenced
Dylan Thornton disappeared during his 18th birthday party nine years ago, and he was found dead days later at the top of a sand dune, Florida authorities said.
The DJ who worked his party, 31-year-old Isaac Lemons, has now been sentenced to nearly 15 years in prison on a charge of manslaughter and sale of a controlled substance, the State Attorney’s Office for the Fifth Judicial Circuit of Florida said Nov. 8.
His attorney during the course of two trials, Debra Tuomey, told McClatchy News that Lemons maintains his innocence and said the state didn’t have evidence to support that Lemons had sold drugs to the 18-year-old.
Another attorney is working with Lemons to appeal the case.
Lemons’ first trial ended in a hung jury in 2021, but a jury in a second trial found him guilty in August, officials said.
A couple days after Thornton turned 18 in September 2015, his friends threw him a birthday party at a friend’s home in Brooksville and hired Lemons to DJ, deputies with the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office reported in an arrest affidavit.
Thornton’s friends said when they met with Lemons the day before the party, Lemons offered to bring the drug Molly, also known as ecstasy, to the party for anyone interested in buying it, deputies said.
The evening of the party, Lemons is accused of giving Thornton and four other people a drug he described as Molly. But the people who took it told deputies it had an “unusual blueish color,” according to the report.
Later during the party, Thornton and a friend briefly left to go to Thornton’s brother’s house, deputies said. But they thought they saw deputies’ patrol cars and thought they were followed, so they started running away, eventually getting separated, according to investigators.
That was the last time any of Thornton’s friends saw him.
When he didn’t return to the party, Thornton’s friends assumed he decided to stay with his brother, but when they went looking for him the next day, they couldn’t find him, deputies said.
The sheriff’s office conducted a grid search, and they found Thornton dead at the top of a sand dune three days after the party, authorities said.
A medical examiner concluded the 18-year-old had died of an accidental overdose of Flakka, which is similar to bath salts.
Detectives said they couldn’t get in touch with Lemons after the incident, believing that he had fled the state to avoid law enforcement. In February 2017, nearly a year and a half after the incident, deputies tracked Lemons to Kansas and flew there to speak with him.
He denied giving drugs to anyone at the party that night, deputies said.
He was charged with third-degree murder but found guilty of a lesser charge of manslaughter, Hernando County records show.
Brooksville is about a 55-mile drive north of Tampa.
This story was originally published November 8, 2024 at 3:37 PM with the headline "18-year-old vanished at his birthday party 9 years ago, Florida cops say. Now DJ sentenced."