TAMPA, Fla. — A friend of accused Seminole Heights killer Howell “Trai” Donaldson III says he came to her home shortly after the serial killer’s fourth victim, Ronald Felton, was murdered.
In audio recordings released Thursday along with hundreds of documents, Nicole Minnis told detectives Donaldson stayed at her house for a few nights and had been acting strangely around the time of the killings.
“Calls me out of nowhere, it was completely unexpected because we hadn’t talked in a while and it caught me off guard because I had just moved back to Tampa and he just pretty much explained to me that he was back in Tampa and didn’t really feel like he anybody to talk to and that he trusted me as a – word-for-word – ‘trusted confidante’ and he just wanted to reach out to me and, I guess talk and… I don’t know. It was kind of strange,” Minnis told investigators.
“I don’t know why he chose me because he has, not a lot of friends, a lot of people know him, he has a lot of acquaintances, but he has a very close-knit friend group and I know all of them very well.”
“His [Donaldson’s] sister reached out to me in Instagram and his cousin,” she went on to say. “I’m like ‘why me?’ I don’t ... understand, the whole thing, I don’t understand why me.”
“I told Trai, I go, ‘Trai, your friends are reaching out, can you call your friends? Just call and let them know you’re fine? Why are they looking for you?’ And he was just like, ‘No, don’t respond’, he kept telling me, ‘Don’t respond, don’t respond’,” said Minnis. “He was just like, ‘I don’t need them knowing where I’m at, I don’t want to talk to them’. I’m telling you, it was very weird.”
Then, before dawn on the morning of November 14th, 2017, just a few hours after Felton was shot and killed at the intersection of Nebraska Avenue and Caracas Street, Donaldson showed up at Minnis’ house.
“Between 5 and 5:15, I didn’t look at the exact number but I know for a fact the clock said 5-something – the doorbell rang. Obviously I’m sleeping and my mom opened the door and let him in,” she told police. "I go into the room to get my clothes and at that point he was asleep and I go, ‘Trai, where were you last night? You literally rang the doorbell at 5 a.m.’ He goes, ‘I thought I had to work, I went into work.’ And I go, ‘You couldn’t have just called??’”
Minnis told investigators Donaldson also showed up at her house out of the blue two weeks later on the night before he was arrested.
Donaldson is due in court on Feb. 27.
What others are reading right now:
►Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the 10 News app now.
Have a news tip? Email tips@wtsp.com, visit our Facebook page or Twitter feed.