FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – A love triangle among Miramar High School students turned into a murder in 2021, and resulted in two recent 25-year prison sentences, and a 20-year-old man wanting to represent himself while awaiting a 2025 trial in Broward County, records show.
Dwight “DJ” Grant was 18 and a senior preparing to graduate when he vanished on Oct. 17, 2021. Detectives found him dead two days later. He had suffered a knife wound in his neck and a sword wound in his chest when the killers left him behind bushes at an apartment complex, near Sherman Circle North, police said.
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Detectives reported finding surveillance videos and text messages incriminating three of his teenage classmates: Christie Parisien, Jaslyn Smith, and Andre D. Clements III. According to police, Christie, then 17, was allegedly dating Andre, then also 17, and Jaslyn, then 16, was their friend.
Detectives also reported the evidence showed Clements viewed Grant as a romantic rival.
According to an arrest warrant in the case, Andre’s messages to Christie on Oct. 11, 2021, included “Murder will definitely happen soon,” “It’ll be bloody,” and “Help me kill him.” Andre was allegedly upset that Grant had consensual sex with his ex-girlfriend, who police did not name publicly.
According to police, Andre also sent threatening messages to his ex-girlfriend referring to Grant. The messages, according to police, included, “We have plans for this person ... If he made you happy, get used to him not being here anymore.”
Detectives accused Christie of luring Grant to a stairwell six days later with a promise of sex. Andre was waiting there to ambush him with Jaslyn, police said.
“Andre and Jaslyn are captured on video carrying what appeared to be a lifeless victim out of the stairwell and dropping him to the ground,” Miramar Detective Pedro Interian wrote in his report, adding the teens used cleaning supplies and a burning fire to try to get rid of the evidence.
After a grand jury indictment and their arrest, prosecutors filed cases against the trio on Nov. 5, 2021, for first-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence, and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Their attorneys filed their written plea of not guilty. That changed on Aug. 29.
About a month before the third anniversary of the murder, Christie Parisien and Jaslyn Smith, now both adults, appeared before Broward County Circuit Judge Ernest Kollra. Smith. now 19, and Parisien, now 20, pleaded guilty. Kollra sentenced them both to 25 years in prison each followed by 10 years of probation.
Kollra was also presiding over their co-defendant Andre Clements’s capital homicide case for the same three charges. Clements also pleaded not guilty, but he has not changed his plea. Records show he has had issues with his defense.
Clements filed a 16-page hand-written motion asking Kollra to dismiss the conspiracy to commit murder charge arguing there were “fundamental defects” in the indictment so the prosecution “may not legally proceed.” Records show the motion was dated and signed by Clements on May 15, and filed on July 24.
Attorneys Kaitlin Gonzalez and Joseph Kimok had filed a motion for continuance of trial on July 19 saying they would be prepared for trial by January. The defense attorneys, assigned to defend Clements in June, reported Clements was “pro se,” representing himself in court with attorneys “merely acting as standby counsel” so not much had been done.
Gonzalez and Kimok listed some of the defense work pending — including the deposition of “a civilian eye-witness to the crime.”
Kollra set Clements’s trial to begin on Jan. 13. On Saturday evening, Broward Sheriff’s Office inmate records showed Clements was at the main jail, Parisien was at the Paul Rein Detention Facility, and Smith was at the North Broward Bureau waiting to be transferred to the custody of the Florida Department of Corrections.
Local 10 News Assignment Desk Planning Editor Frine Gomez contributed to this report.