Police say a 40-year-old man attacked Nilufa Easmin outside a Chevron station, and court testimony later said he admitted he went there intending to kill a clerk.
FORT MYERS, FL — A 51-year-old gas station clerk and mother of two was killed outside her Fort Myers workplace on April 3 after a man armed with a hammer attacked her in the parking lot of a Chevron station, authorities said, leading to murder charges and a widening dispute over the suspect’s immigration history.
The killing drew attention first as a violent daytime homicide and then as a case with broader political weight after the Department of Homeland Security said the suspect, 40-year-old Rolbert Joachin, is a Haitian national who was living in the United States without legal status. Fort Myers police said officers arrested him the same day, and later court testimony said he confessed after being advised of his rights in Creole. The immediate stakes now are both criminal and procedural: prosecutors are pursuing the homicide case while federal immigration authorities have placed a detainer on him.
Police said the attack happened at the Chevron station near Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Highland Avenue, a busy corner in Fort Myers where regular customers and workers were starting the day. Local television footage and witness accounts described a fast-moving scene that began when a man was seen damaging a black SUV in the parking lot. Employees later said the vehicle belonged to the victim, Nilufa Easmin, who also went by Yasmin. Investigators said Easmin came outside after the damage began, and surveillance video then showed the suspect approach her and strike her in the head with the hammer. Medics pronounced her dead at the scene. Fort Myers police said officers then began a search that stretched into nearby streets, and the Lee County School District placed three schools on lockdown during the hunt for the suspect before those restrictions were lifted.
By later that day, police said officers found Joachin on Mango Street and took him into custody. Early police statements listed charges of homicide and property damage, while later reports said he was being held in the killing of Easmin, a clerk whom co-workers and neighbors remembered as familiar to many regular customers. Gulf Coast News reported that she was from Bangladesh and was the mother of two teenage daughters. In court on April 8, Detective Laynor Rodriguez testified that Joachin told investigators he had gone to the station specifically to kill a clerk there. According to the court account, he said he wore the same clothes the victim had seen him in two days earlier so she would recognize him, then smashed her vehicle on purpose so she would come outside. Authorities have not publicly described a full motive beyond those statements, and court records available through local reporting did not explain why he said he wanted to kill her. That remains one of the central unanswered questions in the case.
The scene shook residents in and around the Dunbar area, where the station sits along a major road and where many people said the violence felt especially jarring because it unfolded in daylight and near schools, homes and a neighborhood business. Witnesses told local reporters they knew Easmin as a worker they saw often, not as someone tied to any obvious dispute. Neighbors also said the police search alarmed them because the suspect was moving through nearby streets before officers found him. Several bystanders quoted in local coverage described the killing as shocking and personal, focusing on how a routine stop at a familiar store had turned into a homicide scene. That reaction became part of the story because the case was not only about a violent death but also about how quickly a local crime can unsettle an entire area, especially when video of the attack and details from the arrest spread almost at once.
The case moved into a broader national argument on April 8, when DHS said Joachin first entered the United States in August 2022 and was released into the country. The department said a federal immigration judge issued a final removal order that year, but he later received Temporary Protected Status that expired in 2024. DHS said Fort Myers police asked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for help during the search on April 3 and that ICE later placed a detainer on Joachin. Those statements turned the homicide into a fresh point of conflict over federal immigration policy, with state and federal officials using the case to argue over how immigration cases were handled in recent years. That debate, however, is separate from the evidence needed in the criminal prosecution. In court, the immediate legal issues remain the homicide allegation, the evidence from surveillance video, witness statements, the reported confession and whatever forensic findings prosecutors introduce as the case develops.
There also appear to be open questions beyond the killing itself. During the April 8 hearing, local reporters said prosecutors indicated Joachin was also a suspect in another case, though the court account did not identify that matter. No public explanation had been provided in the reporting available Wednesday about whether that other case involved violence, property crime or a separate investigation entirely. It was also not clear from the same reporting whether prosecutors had finalized a first-degree or second-degree murder filing, because different accounts described the charge in different ways at different stages after the arrest. What was clear is that a judge ordered Joachin held without bond at an early appearance and barred him from returning to the crime scene or contacting the victim’s family. No plea was publicly reported in the coverage reviewed, and no defense explanation for the attack had emerged.
For Easmin’s family and co-workers, the public case record only partly explains the loss. People who knew her described a working mother whose death left two daughters without their parent and left a neighborhood without a familiar face behind the counter. Regular customers told reporters that the hardest part was the ordinariness of the place: a gas station many people visited often, on a morning that had started like any other. Their comments were brief and plain, but they gave the case a human scale that court language does not. One customer said it was strange to realize that someone he saw at the store regularly was suddenly gone. Another neighbor said the search frightened him because the suspect had passed near relatives before police caught him. Those remarks, though simple, underscored how the killing reached beyond the parking lot itself, touching a family, a workplace and a broader community already trying to absorb what had happened.
The case stood Wednesday with Joachin in custody, a federal immigration detainer in place, and prosecutors continuing to build the homicide prosecution. The next milestone is a further court appearance or filing clarifying the charge level and the schedule for the criminal case.
Author note: Last updated April 9, 2026.