According to documents, a 20-year-old male who wishes to represent himself while awaiting a 2025 trial in Broward County and two recent 25-year prison sentences are the outcomes of a love triangle among Miramar High School students that turned into a murder in 2021.
On October 17, 2021, Dwight “DJ” Grant, then eighteen years old and a senior getting ready to graduate, disappeared. It took detectives two days to discover him dead.
When the murderers abandoned him behind shrubbery outside an apartment building close to Sherman Circle North, he sustained a knife wound to his neck and a sword wound to his chest, according to the police.
Investigators claimed to have discovered text messages and surveillance footage implicating Christie Parisien, Jaslyn Smith, and Andre D. Clements III, three of his adolescent classmates.
Christie, then 17 years old, was supposedly dating Andre, also 17 years old, and Jaslyn, then 16 years old, was their acquaintance, according to the police.
Investigators also stated that the data demonstrated Clements’s perception of Grant as a love competitor.
Andre texted Christie on October 11, 2021, with the following messages: “Murder will definitely happen soon,” “It’ll be bloody,” and “Help me kill him,” according to an arrest request in the case. According to reports, Andre was angry that Grant and his ex-girlfriend—whom the authorities chose not to identify—had consensual intercourse.
Police claim that Andre also threatened his ex-girlfriend with messages that included Grant.
Police said that among the comments were, “We have plans for this person… if he made you happy, get used to him not being here anymore.”
Six days later, investigators claimed Christie had lured Grant to a stairway with the prospect of sex. According to the police, Andre was waiting there to surprise him with Jaslyn.
In his report, Miramar Detective Pedro Interian stated, “Andre and Jaslyn are captured on video carrying what appears to be a lifeless victim out of the stairwell and dropping him to the ground.” The teenagers also attempted to destroy the evidence by using cleaning supplies and a smoldering fire.
Prosecutors filed cases against the three on November 5, 2021, for first-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence, and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder following a grand jury indictment and their detention. Their legal representatives submitted a formal not-guilty plea. That was till August 29.
Christie Parisien and Jaslyn Smith, who are now adults, appeared before Broward County Circuit Judge Ernest Kollra approximately one month before to the third anniversary of the murder. Smith—now 19—and Parisien—now 20—both entered guilty pleas. Kollra gave them each a sentence of 25 years in prison, with an additional 10 years on probation.
For the same three charges, Kollra was also overseeing the capital homicide case against their co-defendant, Andre Clements. Clements entered a not guilty plea as well, but he hasn’t since altered it. Documents indicate he has experienced problems with his defense.
In a 16-page handwritten motion, Clements requested that Kollra drop the conspiracy to commit murder allegation, citing “fundamental defects” in the indictment as grounds why the prosecution “may not legally proceed.”
According to the records, Clements signed and dated the motion on May 15 and it was filed on July 24.
On July 19, attorneys Joseph Kimok and Kaitlin Gonzalez submitted a motion to continue the trial, stating that they would be ready for trial by January. Assigned to defend Clements in June, the defense lawyers stated that not much had been accomplished because Clements was “pro se,” representing himself in court with lawyers “merely acting as standby counsel.”
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A civilian eyewitness to the crime is among the defense work that Gonzalez and Kimok mentioned as being waiting. Kollra scheduled Clements’s trial for January 13.
According to inmate data obtained by the Broward Sheriff’s Office on Saturday night, Smith was at the North Broward Bureau awaiting transfer to the Florida Department of Corrections, Parisien was at the Paul Rein Detention Facility, and Clements was at the main jail.
