A woman visiting Florida pulled a struggling man from the ocean near Vero Beach on March 24, coached him through the waves, and watched him walk away. She had no idea she had just saved the life of a man wanted for allegedly gunning down two people hours earlier.
The man was Jesse Scott Ellis, 64, a double-homicide suspect accused of killing his wife of 13 years, Stacie Ellis Mason, and her married colleague, Danny Ooley, 56, in a library parking lot that same morning. He remains at large.
According to the New York Post, the woman, identified only as Belinda, told WPBF she noticed a man screaming for help while walking near Riomar Beach on the morning of March 24. She ran into the water without hesitation.
"So, he got on his back, and he said, 'I'm exhausted, I'm tired,' and I said, 'Do it! Get on your back and let the waves carry you, you can do it, come on.'"
Video released by police captured Belinda bending down beside the man as he made it out of the water. After catching his breath, Ellis told Belinda he was "going to take a long vacation." Then he was gone.
Belinda later said she still would have helped rescue him, but would have called 911 immediately had she known who he was. Her instinct was simple and, frankly, decent:
"I could not leave him in the water no matter what."
Around 7 a.m. that same morning, security footage captured Mason and Ooley arriving in separate vehicles at the parking lot of the Indian River County Main Library in Vero Beach. Mason exited her car and climbed into Ooley's.
Moments later, Ellis pulled into the lot armed with an AR-15-style rifle and fired multiple shots at Ooley's vehicle. Both Mason and Ooley were killed. Ellis then fled.
Officials with the Vero Beach Police Department said during a press conference that Mason and Ooley are believed to have been having an affair. Vero Beach Police Chief David Currey described documents found later in Ellis' truck as being "pages long, dating back to early March," chronicling what Currey called "his pain, wanting to crawl in a hole, can't eat, can't drink, can't sleep, that kind of thing."
None of that pain, however documented, justifies what allegedly happened in that parking lot. Two people are dead. Whatever the circumstances of their relationship, they did not deserve to be executed.
After the shooting, a man was reportedly spotted walking into the water fully clothed at a nearby beach. Rescuers responded but determined he did not need their assistance. He gave them a name that police later learned was fake.
That man was Ellis.
Police executed a search warrant on Ellis' truck, which was discovered at South Beach Park. Inside, they found:
Ellis is wanted on two counts of first-degree premeditated murder. As of Monday evening, he had still not been found. Police have warned residents to expect an increased law enforcement presence in the area as search efforts continue.
It remains unclear whether Ellis ultimately killed himself in the ocean or managed to disappear after Belinda's rescue. What is clear is that a man accused of a calculated double homicide slipped through multiple encounters with would-be rescuers and concerned citizens, giving a false name and walking away each time.
Something is unsettling about this story that goes beyond the obvious. Belinda did exactly what a decent person should do. She saw someone drowning, and she acted. No calculation, no hesitation. That kind of instinctive courage is rare enough to be worth honoring, even when the recipient turns out to be unworthy of it.
The discomfort isn't that she saved him. It's that evil can look like a man gasping for air. It can stumble onto a beach, accept a stranger's kindness, and then vanish into nothing.
Belinda put it as plainly as anyone could:
"Everybody is going through something."
She meant it with compassion. The truth it accidentally contains is darker than she intended. Jesse Scott Ellis was going through something, all right. And two people in a library parking lot paid for it with their lives.
He's still out there. The search continues.