Teen arrested in fatal Beeline crash charged with threatening jail officer

Palm Beach Post (FL)

WEST PALM BEACH - The man charged with stealing a car, running a red light during a chase and killing a 60-year-old grandmother now has been charged with threatening to kill a Palm Beach County jail officer, according to reports.

Tre'on Tariq Morgan was just 17 when he stole the car from a Jupiter gas station on Nov. 28, 2018, and 27 minutes later slammed into a car at Beeline Highway and Northlake Boulevard driven by Debora Eber, a medical transcriptionist from The Acreage. She was killed.

Morgan was charged as an adult with vehicular homicide, fleeing police and grand theft of a motor vehicle. He has been in jail since then, and his case is before the court system's mental-health division.

In a misdemeanor assault charge filed Oct. 18, Leslie Ricketts, a corrections support, reported Oct 11 that Morgan pointed at him with his fingers mimicking a handgun, according to a Palm Beach County sheriff's report.

He told Ricketts, "I'm going to blow your (expletive) brains out when I get out so you better watch your back."

The officer said Morgan then pressed the "gun" to his own head and uttered a similar threat to Ricketts.

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In August, a judge ordered that Morgan, now 18, be transferred to the courts' mental-health division after his public defender wrote that a review of reports for Morgan showed "previous diagnoses of mental illness and reports of hearing voices." Court records don't show the results of any evaluations.

Morgan separately was charged in February with drug possession after police alleged he was in a stolen vehicle on July 3, 2018, with two bags of the mood-altering substance Ecstasy. That case also remains open.

EK@pbpost.com

@eliotkpbp

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