LEHIGH ACRES, Fla. — A 23-year-old man is behind bars and charged with stabbing a woman to death inside her Lehigh Acres home.
It happened Monday night at a house in the 3000 block of 56th Street West. The Lee County Sheriff's Office has charged Lukas Carlton, who they say had a domestic relationship with the victim, with second degree murder.
Fox 4 community corespondent Stephen Pimpo talks to neighbors of the victim, who say they will miss her dearly and also learned this is not the first time the suspect was charged with a violent crime:
Monday evening, next door neighbor Max Osimeus said he got a panicked call from one of his daughters.
“What’s going on? Is everything OK,” he asked her. “She said, ‘No dad, no, you got to come home.’”
He came home only to learn that his neighbor of 11 years had been killed.
“I was greeted by the victim’s two daughters, two girls and that’s when they said, ‘Our mom is dead,’” Osimeus said. “I was like, ‘No way, your mom is not dead. Something happened but she’s not dead.’”
The Lee County Sheriff’s office said they were called to the home at around 9:20 p.m. and found the woman with stab wounds dead in her garage. They said Carlton fled the scene.
Carlton was later arrested in Pasco County by Florida Highway Patrol.
In 2020, Carlton was charged with aggravated assault for threatening his stepfather with a baseball bat in Lee County but those charges were later dropped.
In 2021, Carlton was arrested for shooting at cars with a pellet gun from his vehicle in Alachua County and spent one year in prison after he was found guilty of three counts of firing into a dwelling in April 2023.
Osimeus said his daughter stopped going over to visit next door after Carlton moved in.
“Because of him moving in, you kind of backed out, she refused to like, be friends with them,” he said.
Osimeus is still in disbelief.
“(She) was a very good person. Very good person,” he said. “I can’t believe those two little girls are going to be without a mom.”
UPDATE 5:11 pm.:
The Lee County Sheriff's Office says they arrested the murder suspect in Pasco County.
Deputies say they arrested 23-year-old Lukas Carlton within the last hour.
According to detectives, they found a woman stabbed several times and her body was found in the garage. Deputies say she and Carlton had a "domestic relation."
The sheriff's office found him in Hillsborough County and Florida Highway Patrol pulled over a vehicle in Pasco County where they arrested Carlton.
It's not clear if he was the driver or passenger.
ORIGINAL STORY:
The Lee County Sheriff's Office is investigating the homicide of a woman in Lehigh Acres.
Deputies say the investigation started around 9:00 pm on Monday at the 3100 block of 56th Street West.
Last night, at 9:20pm deputies responded to a homicide of an adult female on the 3100 block of 56th Street Southwest in Lehigh Acres. This was an isolated incident and detectives are actively investigating this quickly developing case. We will provide more details when available pic.twitter.com/ovO9KD3cMl
— Carmine Marceno - Florida’s Law and Order Sheriff (@SheriffLeeFL) April 8, 2025
The sheriff's office says this is an isolated incident.
