The man who killed a South Florida real estate agent in 2021 is seeking to have his first-degree murder charge dropped, claiming the killing was in self-defense.
Raymond Reese, 56, killed Sara Trost, then 40, while the agent was waiting to meet a potential buyer outside the home Reese once lived in. The defendant had been evicted from the home, and he’d returned to confront his landlord, whom he’d never met in person. Reese said he shot Trost, thinking it was the landlord, and immediately called 911 to report what he’d done.
However, Reese has changed his account of the Dec. 23 murder, invoking the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law in court on Wednesday. Reese said he drove to his former home and accidentally clipped the side of Trost’s Jeep parked in the driveway. He said Trost was in the car and pointed a gun at him through the window, which led him to fatally shoot her.
“From the time I saw the gun, instantly, fear gripped my heart,” Reese said, according to the Tampa Bay Times. “I thought for sure I was going to be shot and killed.”
State prosecutors agreed that Trost had a firearm but maintained that she never brandished it, with crime scene photos showing the gun still in her purse. “He says ‘my landlord is an evil person,’ he says ‘I shot her,’ he says a lot of things. But never once, through the entirety of the transcript, does he ever say this was self-defense, that she had a gun, she pulled a gun,” Assistant State Attorney Taylor Collins said.
The Court is expected to rule on Reese’s self-defense claim next week.
In the days after Trost’s murder, the her real estate colleagues and her synagogue rallied around her family and shared fond memories. They started a now-expired memorial fund, which raised $5,000 to cover expenses for Trost’s husband and daughter.
“We are all still reeling in shock over the unimaginable loss of our dear friend Sara Michelle Trost. Sara Michelle, a dedicated real estate broker, tragically lost her life while performing her job,” the fund’s homepage read. “To all of us who knew Sara, she was larger-than-life. There was always a smile on her face and a good word to share. Sara was the most giving and caring person to both those she personally knew and those whose paths happened to cross hers.”
“…Whatever Sara put her mind to, she excelled at, whether being a home designer, a realtor, or a broker,” it added.
The update on Trost’s murder case comes alongside the National Association of Realtors’ Realtor Safety Month. NAR’s latest safety survey revealed that 22 percent of Realtors have felt unsafe on the job. Realtors felt most vulnerable to danger at open houses (34 percent), followed by receiving threatening or inappropriate communication (31 percent), showings (31 percent) and meeting a new client in a secluded location (28 percent).
The industry has upgraded safety procedures over the past decade, following the tragic deaths of several agents, including Arkansas Realtor Beverly Carter, who was lured into a trap by a couple who said they were interested in touring a home. Instead, they kidnapped and killed Carter, who was discovered five days after the supposed showing.
Carter’s family started a namesake foundation and advocated for better, more frequent safety training, leading the Arkansas Real Estate Commission to add annual one-hour safety training to its continuing education (CE) requirements.
