Inside a packed courtroom on the top floor of the Hillsborough County Courthouse, about 20 members of Savannah Mathis’ family waited quietly. They donned shirts bearing the 21-year-old nursing student’s smiling face and carried life-size cardboard cutouts of her. Earlier this month, a jury found Vakarvery Scott guilty of first-degree murder in Mathis’ slaying. The verdict carries a mandatory .
One night in 2021, a Tampa nursing student and her younger sister were leaving their family’s restaurant, BJ’s Alabama BBQ on South Dale Mabry Highway. About an hour after the sisters hugged their aunt goodbye, police found their bullet-ridden Nissan Altima in Tampa’s West Riverfront neighborhood. Savannah Mathis, 21, had been shot in the head as she drove down the street. Now, two years .