Thief Beats Father and Son to Death With Baseball Bat Near Tiger Woods’ Former Home

A fatal incident recently occurred in an upscale neighborhood in Windermere, Florida, near golfer Tiger Wood’s former home. A car thief used a stolen car to break into a neighborhood, where he tried to steal another. Homeowners John and Lisa Savey confronted the thief, and he beat John to death with a baseball bat.

According to the police, Ezekiel Emanuel Hopkins rammed the security gates at the Lake Crescent Reserve community. He used the vehicle to push them open and then drove in. After he beat John to death, Lisa fled into her house to warn her grandson, who locked himself in a bathroom and called the police. The thief then attacked Lisa, seriously injuring her, and then beat her son James to death.

The grandson remained in the bathroom and on the line with 911 during the fatal incident. The police arrived on the scene while Hopkins remained in the house, prompting communications with a hostage negotiator. The police ultimately entered the home and found Hopkins unconscious in another bathroom. It appeared that he drank some bleach. They arrested Hopkins and took him to the hospital.

“It’s a horrific situation,” Windermere police chief Dave Ogden said. “This is a small, quiet town. Certainly, we do not have a lot of crime but we are not immune to crime. We know that crime has happened here in the past and unfortunately, it has reached our doorsteps one more time.”

Ogden also explained that officers had spotted the car thief earlier in the evening. They deemed it suspicious, but did not pursue after the car “took off at a high rate of speed.” Ogden said that “that does not meet the parameters to engage in pursuit — so he was not engaged in a pursuit.”

The upscale neighborhood where this incident occurred was within reach of Woods and ex-wife Elin Nordegren’s former home. The couple lived in another gated Windermere community and drew attention to their home after Woods crashed his Cadillac Escalade in 2009. He collided with a row of hedges and hit a fire hydrant around 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 27. The vehicle finally stopped after hitting a tree, and paramedics later found Woods lying in the street, snoring and without any shoes or socks on his feet.

Two days prior to this crash, the National Enquirer published an article alleging Woods was having an affair with a New York nightclub host. A sex scandal emerged in the wake of the article, as well as the crash, as more than a dozen became known as Woods’ mistresses.