A newly released video shows the moment an estranged husband fired eight rounds from a pistol at a romantic rival outside a Gainesville apartment at close range, hitting his target once in the leg as the gunman’s wife shouted, “Why would you do that?”
In the 17-second video, Julius Lee Caldwell, 30, of Lithia Springs, Georgia, fired three shots in fast succession from about 8 feet away then ran toward his target and skipped in the air toward him as he fired at least five more times. The man was shot once in the leg. A postal carrier’s truck driving through the parking lot sped away.
Gainesville has wrestled with a serious and persistent gun violence problem for years – and the numbers of residential and commercial surveillance cameras have been climbing – but it’s still rare for a shooting such as this one in 2022 to be captured on video and publicly seen.
Above: Video from a neighbor's Ring doorbell camera captures the shooting in August 2022 by Julius Lee Caldwell, 30, of Lithia Springs, Georgia, who was confronting a romantic rival outside an apartment in Gainesville. Caldwell was sentenced Dec. 19, 2024, to 20 years in prison on a charge of attempted second-degree murder. The State Attorney's Office censored the victim in the shooting and turned over the video under Florida's public records law after a three-month delay. WUFT further edited the video to remove profanity and footage of Caldwell's firing of additional rounds after the victim fell. (Alachua County State Attorney's Office/WUFT News)
In an unrelated case, in May 2023, a jury in Gainesville convicted a 26-year-old man of second-degree murder after a one-day trial that included a recording of the deadly shooting caught on surveillance cameras from a nearby business. That gunman, Eugene Javon Patrick, was sentenced to life in prison after jurors watched replays of the shooting.
In the apartment shooting, Caldwell, who calls himself “Luh Savage” on social media, confronts the victim, who was previously in a romantic relationship with Caldwell’s estranged wife and shared a child with her. Caldwell and the woman were separated and planning to divorce, according to court records.
During an argument, Caldwell retrieved a pistol from inside his estranged wife’s apartment. In the video, he is seen walking aggressively toward the man, who said, “Oh, you going to pull a pistol?” and taunted Caldwell to pull the trigger.
The Monday afternoon shooting at the Harbor Cove Apartments in northwest Gainesville in August 2022 was captured on a neighbor’s Ring doorbell camera and submitted as evidence in the case.
The newly released video was never shown to a jury. Just before the trial, Caldwell pleaded no contest to attempted second-degree murder, and Circuit Judge David P. Kreider sentenced him to 20 years in prison. He expects to be released in August 2042. He had already been in jail 841 days waiting for his case to be resolved.
In an interview Tuesday from the state prison in Century, Florida, near the Alabama border, Caldwell said he didn’t plan to shoot his rival – even though he went into the apartment to retrieve his gun and then confronted the man outside before firing eight times at him. “It was never my intentions for this to happen,” he said.
In a two-page, handwritten letter to the judge in a related case in March 2023, Caldwell wrote that the man he shot “was verbally aggressive so I stood my ground to protect my family.” A sheriff’s deputy wrote in Caldwell’s arrest report that the two men “were engaged in a verbal argument outside the apartment” before the shooting. The video introduced as evidence in the case doesn’t show the arguing that led to the gunfire.
In both his interview from prison and the letter to the judge, Caldwell framed the shooting as defensive, although prosecutors said the man he shot was unarmed and there is no record of the gunshot victim being charged with any crime in Gainesville.
Prosecutors initially charged Caldwell with attempted first-degree murder and being a felon in possession of a gun. He previously pleaded guilty in Georgia in 2016 to felony drug and weapons charges.
The State Attorney's Office turned over the video under Florida's public records law after a three-month delay. Generally, most evidence collected as part of a criminal case becomes publicly available at the conclusion of the case.
It initially said Dec. 19 – the same day the judge sent Caldwell to prison – that it would decline to release the video publicly without permission from the shooting victim. It cited guidelines from the Florida attorney general allowing it to withhold records that "could be used to locate or harass the victim or the victim’s family, or which could disclose confidential or privileged information of the victim."
By then, prosecutors had already published in court records the name and home address in Georgia of the shooting victim, who said this week in a brief phone interview that he was unaware that prosecutors had released the video.
The victim promised to discuss the shooting after viewing the video then stopped responding to calls or texts. He confirmed he saw the video a reporter shared with him.
“We was having good laugh at it,” he texted.
Caldwell’s estranged wife, who witnessed the shooting, declined Wednesday to discuss what happened that day or what events led to it.
Prosecutors blurred the gunshot victim in the video.
