The cross-county search ended at a Titusville pond after officers found a vehicle connected to the fatal shooting of Jacqueline Reyes.
TITUSVILLE, Fla. — An automated camera alert helped turn a homicide search in Daytona Beach into a police pursuit in Titusville on July 27, allowing officers to locate a gray sedan connected to a man wanted in his estranged wife’s killing before the vehicle crashed into a pond at Sand Point Park.
The search ended with 54-year-old Robert Reyes Jr. dead from what police described as a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but it had begun about 50 miles away with the death of 44-year-old Jacqueline “Jackie” Reyes. Daytona Beach police say Robert Reyes forced his way into her Reena Drive townhome and shot her shortly after 6 p.m. Authorities said he then left the city, prompting neighboring agencies to look for his vehicle while Daytona Beach officers processed the homicide scene.
Titusville police entered the case after receiving information from Volusia County law enforcement that Reyes, who was wanted in connection with the Daytona Beach homicide, was believed to be in the city. Officers did not initially have him in sight. Instead, the department’s automatic license plate reader network detected the vehicle and helped police follow its movement from one part of Titusville to another. The system eventually led officers to the sedan near South Washington Avenue and Garden Street.
When police tried to stop the car, Reyes fled, investigators said. Officers pursued him as he drove east on A. Max Brewer Memorial Parkway toward Sand Point Park. The chase ended when the sedan veered off the road and entered a pond. Police said Reyes did not respond when officers tried to contact him after the crash. He was found dead in the vehicle. Titusville authorities said their preliminary investigation indicated that the fatal gunshot was self-inflicted and that no officer had fired a weapon.
The technology-assisted search compressed a multi-county manhunt into a short period, but investigators have not publicly explained why Reyes drove to Titusville. Daytona Beach Police Chief Jakari Young said the reason for that trip remained unclear in the immediate aftermath. The available police accounts instead establish a route defined by two endpoints: Jacqueline Reyes’ home in Daytona Beach, where officers found her dead, and Sand Point Park in Titusville, where officers recovered her husband’s body after the pursuit.
Back in Daytona Beach, investigators were piecing together what happened before Reyes left. Young said Robert Reyes had forced his way through a back door of Jacqueline Reyes’ residence. One of the couple’s three sons was on the phone with his mother as the attack unfolded. According to WFTV, the son later told a 911 dispatcher that he heard his mother tell someone to put down a gun before hearing a shot. He summoned police, but officers arrived after Reyes had already departed.
David Reyes, the couple’s eldest son, offered a more detailed account of the call in an interview with WESH. The 26-year-old said his mother called him shortly before she died. He said he heard her screaming and could hear an alarm in the background. His account gives the emergency response a family dimension: before officers in two cities began searching for vehicles, reviewing camera data and securing scenes, a son realized from a phone call that his mother was in immediate danger.
Daytona Beach police said the evidence pointed to jealousy as the motive. Young said Robert Reyes had wanted to reconcile with his estranged wife but became angry after learning she had moved on and was dating other people. Police said Jacqueline Reyes had moved to Daytona Beach about a year before the killing following the couple’s separation. Robert Reyes lived in St. Cloud. David Reyes later said his parents were divorced, while police described them as estranged.
Young said surveillance evidence also captured an apparent suicide attempt by Robert Reyes after the shooting in Daytona Beach. According to the chief, the firearm malfunctioned, and Reyes then drove away. Police later recovered at least two guns. Young said Reyes ultimately used the same firearm involved in Jacqueline Reyes’ killing to take his own life. Because Reyes died before he could be arrested, those findings will not be tested in a criminal trial and should be understood as conclusions of the police investigation rather than a jury verdict.
Investigators also said the July violence was preceded by earlier contact involving the couple. Daytona Beach police had responded to Jacqueline Reyes’ residence in December 2025 after Robert Reyes allegedly entered the home without permission and damaged some of her clothing with bleach. Young described that incident as a burglary. Police also said Jacqueline Reyes had sought a restraining order involving Reyes in 2017, but that matter was dismissed after she did not appear in court. The underlying allegations were not adjudicated in the dismissed proceeding.
Police separately discussed Robert Reyes’ prior criminal record. Local reporting said he had been charged with aggravated battery in Orange County in 2017, but that the case was dropped and did not involve Jacqueline Reyes. Authorities also pointed to misdemeanor convictions for offenses including loitering or prowling, obstruction and making a false report. Those records were part of the background investigators disclosed after the homicide, not evidence by themselves of what occurred on Reena Drive.
While the homicide investigation focused on the couple’s history, Titusville’s portion of the case centered on locating the suspect and determining what happened during the pursuit. Police said the license plate reader network followed the vehicle through the city before officers encountered it. Such systems capture plate information from passing vehicles and can alert police when a plate is associated with an active law enforcement notice. In this case, authorities credited the network with helping them locate Reyes after the Daytona Beach killing.
The crash at Sand Point Park did not end the investigative work. Titusville officers had to determine whether Reyes had died in the collision, had been struck by police gunfire or had suffered another injury. The department said officers did not fire and that the evidence instead pointed to a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Daytona Beach investigators, meanwhile, continued examining Jacqueline Reyes’ death and the events before Robert Reyes left her home. The two agencies’ findings formed different parts of the same timeline.
What the technology could not capture was the impact on the couple’s sons. Young said all three lost both parents in the span of about two hours. David Reyes said his mother, a real estate agent, was someone who could bring people together and make them feel acknowledged. He also said he and his brothers still loved their father despite condemning what he had done. The family was preparing separate funerals for Jacqueline and Robert Reyes in the days after the deaths.
That unusual family position underscores the limits of viewing the case only as a police pursuit. From a law enforcement perspective, the sequence demonstrates how information moved from a homicide scene to another jurisdiction and how camera technology helped officers find a wanted vehicle. From the family’s perspective, the same sequence marks the hours in which three sons lost their mother to a killing and their father to suicide.
There will be no arrest or trial in Jacqueline Reyes’ death. Daytona Beach police have identified Robert Reyes as the person who killed her and have described the case as a murder-suicide, while Titusville police have said the evidence surrounding his death is consistent with suicide. No other suspect has been announced. Investigators had not publicly resolved why Reyes traveled to Titusville, leaving that movement as one of the unanswered details in an otherwise tightly documented cross-county chronology.
The final police account therefore depends on two linked investigations: one beginning inside a Daytona Beach home and the other ending beside a Titusville pond. Automatic plate readers helped officers close the geographic distance between those locations, but the central fact remains the killing that started the search. Jacqueline Reyes was dead before the first Titusville alert, and the suspect police were trying to stop would also be dead before officers could question him about why he had fled or what had happened inside her home.
Author note: Last updated August 30, 2026.