Man accused of killing childhood friends to appear in court Monday

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – A Miami Gardens fugitive, who is wanted for killing two childhood friends he accused of bullying, will be spending the weekend at the Vernon C. Bain Center, an 800-bed jail in the Bronx. 

Javani Stewart, who is facing charges in Miami-Dade County, walked into the New York City Police Department's precinct in the Bronx Tuesday night to ask for help with housing, police said. He ended up confessing to the killings and to hiding the gun in an abandoned building near the murder scene.

Miami Gardens Police Officer Sean Horne, the lead detective in the case, believes Stewart shot his two friends at point-blank range. A witness told officers late last year Stewart feared that they were going to kill him over ongoing conflicts related to an illegal business venture involving mobile phones. 

"The subject shot the victims while seated in the rear seat of the vehicle," Carolyn Frazer, a spokesperson for the Miami Gardens Police Department, said in a statement Friday.  

Stewart appeared at the Bronx Supreme Court Wednesday, and he is scheduled to appear in court in New York again on Monday.

Stewart, a 23-year-old Jamaican, will be extradited to Miami-Dade County to face two counts of second-degree murder in the shooting deaths of Donald Leonard Armstrong III and Stephen Luther Campbell, who was the father of a girl and two boys. 

The two men, both 23 years old, were shot June 23 inside a sport utility vehicle that ended up under the Palmetto Expressway, near the intersection of Northwest 27th Avenue and Northwest 167th Street. Campbell was dead. Armstrong was pronounced dead at the hospital. 

A witness told detectives they saw a man who looked like Stewart get out of the car and run northbound on Northwest 27th Avenue after the gunshots. Aside from his confession to NYPD officers, Stewart allegedly confessed to a witness who told police officers he feared they were going to kill him.