Murderer dead by suicide, victim's family angry

The family of Tiffany Dawkins is not happy the man who murdered her is dead from an apparent suicide.

Dwayne Timothy Moore, 25, was suspected in the Christmas 2009 murder in Pender County and charged in a recent shooting Wilmington. He shot himself to death Friday in Florida as police closed in.

Dwayne Timothy Moore, 25, was found dead by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department SWAT team in his room at the Palace Hotel in Orlando at about 2 p.m. last Friday. The hotel had been evacuated after gunshots were heard and reported to authorities.

Moore was charged with attempted murder for shooting Kayla Leann Floyd, 21, in the chest several times on Feb. 1 inside an apartment on Cypress Grove Dr. Police said he then stole Floyd’s blue Honda Accord and apparently headed south.

In a 911 call, Floyd told police she had been shot by her boyfriend and was afraid she was “going to die.”

“We knew his name since the shooting,” said Lucy Crockett, spokeswoman for the Wilmington Police Department. Much of the work in tracking Moore was done by U.S. Marshals based in Wilmington, she said. Once they tracked him to Florida, they sought the help of Florida marshals.

Crockett could not say what led them to that particular location or what evidence linked Moore to the Dawkins case.

A video of the two-hour standoff in Orlando shows a cadre of SWAT members cautiously approaching a doorway, finally racing in. The hotel is also shown surrounded by armored vehicles, police cars and other heavy equipment. The video is available at wesh.com.

Because of Moore’s death and the fact that he had been formally charged, the Floyd case has been closed.

Moore also was the primary suspect in the Dec. 26, 2009, murder of Tiffany Dawkins of Pender County. He had not been charged in that case, however, so it remains open.

In the Dawkins case, the body of the 23-year-old mother of two was found in a ditch at about 5:30 a.m. Dec. 27, 2009, by a man heading to work. He reported that he at first thought it was a deer that maybe had been hit by a car. But it was Dawkins. She had been shot and left alongside N.C. 133 in rural Pender County.

Dawkins and Floyd were distant relatives.

Other members of the family said they are angry Moore would not face a jury.

“If you’re going to be a man, be man enough to take what’s coming to you,” Kim Thomas, Dawkins’ mother, said in a televised interview.

In an earlier interview with the Chronicle, done while Moore was still at large, Dawkins’ sister, Michelle Ikner, said the family “always knew he did it. We warned them