A single Florida dad was fatally shot after a woman he met on a dating website set him up to be robbed.
After connecting on PlentyOfFish, Adam Hilarie took Hailey Bustos bowling in Winter Haven, Florida, on Thursday, August 18. A few hours later, the two went back to his apartment. Later that night she texted him: “I had a good time and would like to see you again.” Investigators believe she was casing his home.
The following evening, Bustos, 18, returned to Hilarie’s Auburndale residence — but this time with three men. Bustos, Andre Warner, Gary Gray and Joshua Ellington knocked on Hilarie’s door, and when he opened it, they then forced their way in at gunpoint, the Associated Press reported. According to the arrest report, obtained by the AP, Bustos told authorities that “Hilarie was begging for his life, he was not putting up any kind of fight and was telling them that he had a 5-year-old daughter.”
During the robbery, Hilarie, 27, was shot in the head with a .38-caliber gun, per the AP. While Hilarie bled to death on the kitchen floor, the group then made off with an Xbox console, video games, three flat-screen TVs, an iPhone, a wallet and other items, according to police documents.
Authorities told The Washington Post that Bustos was paid $50 in cash for her role in the robbery.
Hilarie, who was a laborer and aspiring boxer, left behind his daughter, LaJaya.
“You couldn’t find a better dad,” Hilarie’s close friend Jennifer Meyer tells Us Weekly. “Adam’s life began and ended with his baby girl. Everything he did revolved around his daughter, that little princess was the light of his life.”
Meyer tells Us Weekly that LaJaya is too young to comprehend what happened. “She just knows daddy is with Jesus,” says Meyer.
Bustos, Warner, 26, Gray, 31, and Ellington, 31, were arrested and charged with first-degree murder, armed robbery and conspiracy to commit murder.
Meyer set up a GoFundMe to help raise money for LaJaya and Hilarie’s funeral expenses. He did not have life insurance.
