JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A Gainesville man charged with manslaughter in the road rage shooting death of a Jacksonville man last month pleaded not guilty in court Monday morning.
Brad Lippincott, 30, is accused of firing seven shots at Kahron Warnke during an argument over a traffic incident March 16 near the intersection of 103rd Street and Jammes Road on the Westside.
Warnke drove one block after being shot in the chest before crashing into a vacant rental house on Jammes Road. He died at the scene. His 8-year-old daughter in the car was not injured, but was screaming when help arrived.
Warnke's girlfriend, the mother of the girl, was in the courtroom Monday. She cried out for justice, especially for the couple's daughter, whose last memories of her father are of him being shot to death.
"I'm here on behalf of the victim, Kahron Warnke," Shaniqua Brown said in court. "He was my soul mate, my life partner, my best friend for 15 years."
Brown is praying the man accused of taking her boyfriend's life will pay the ultimate price.
"This is the last picture they took," Brown said as she held a photo of Warnke and their daughter. "It was on daddy-daughter night at Chik-fil-A. They always did things together. They were like two peas in a pod. And they took him away from her."
During the road rage incident, both men pulled into a Bono's Pit Bar-B-Q parking lot, where the shots were fired, police said.
It didn't end there. Both men left the scene, and Lippincott called 911.
Warnke's 8-year-old daughter was sitting in the back seat while everything unfolded.
"He was a wonderful father, and he was devoted to me and our baby, and she was blessed to have eight really, really good years with him," Brown said. "But that was cut short. And it's really horrible that her last memory of her dad is going to be that he was murdered right before her eyes."
While the girl was physically unharmed, Brown says her world was turned upside down.
"This was their last Valentine's Day together, and she'll never get to do this again. This is all we have left of him. This is it," she said.
Lippincott is also charged with discharging a firearm from a vehicle within 1,000 feet of another person. He is scheduled to be back in court for a pretrial hearing April 30.