A Pizza Delivery Driver Was Sh0t Because He Delivered To Her Too Often | HO

The lunch rush at Westshore Pizza Depot in Tampa was thinning out on March 4, 2021, the way it always did—voices fading, the ovens still humming, the air smelling like warm dough and pepperoni oil. A small {US flag} magnet sat crooked on the edge of the register stand, stuck there by a cashier who swore it “kept the tips lucky,” and someone had left a sweating cup of sweet iced tea on the prep shelf like a bookmark in the day.

Marcelus Drayton, 25, came back from a routine delivery and slid behind the counter with the quiet efficiency everyone knew him for. He didn’t linger. He didn’t chat. He just took the grease-stained receipts, lined them up, and started sorting like the paper could explain the world if you put it in the right order.

At 1:36 p.m., a man in a dark cap walked in without glancing at the menu. He scanned the room like he already knew what he wanted. Then he looked straight at Marcelus and asked, flat as a shutdown screen, “You Marcelus?” Marcelus nodded once, stepped away from the counter—and walked toward the door.

Sometimes the difference between “normal” and “never again” is a single yes.

Marcelus worked part-time while taking community college classes, renting a small apartment not far from the shop. He had that reputation that managers love and coworkers tease: the guy who followed schedules precisely, never swapped shifts last minute, never joined the gossip, never stayed an extra second if he didn’t have to. He wasn’t rude. He was just… contained. Like he’d decided early on that life was easier if you didn’t give people anything to grab.

That afternoon, he was at the prep counter, receipts in hand, while the manager looked ahead at the next batch of orders. A couple of employees later said they noticed the man in the cap because he didn’t behave like a customer. No pause. No “hey, can I get…” No glance at the pizzas under the heat lamps. Just a direct walk inside, a brief stop like he was confirming the room, then eyes moving, searching for a specific person.

When he spoke, his voice didn’t rise. It didn’t shake. “You Marcelus?”

The manager assumed it was a complaint. A customer recognizing the delivery driver, angry about a missing dipping cup, maybe. Marcelus didn’t look surprised, though. He didn’t ask “who are you?” or “what’s this about?” He just nodded and stepped away from the counter with a calm that, later, would feel like a clue no one knew how to use in time.

“Everything okay?” the manager called out, half routine, half warning.

Marcelus glanced back, and for a second his expression tightened—nothing dramatic, just a flicker like a door closing. “Yeah,” he said, and kept walking.

The man followed several steps behind. They exited the restaurant and stopped near the walkway outside. The exterior cameras caught the next moments in brutal clarity: the man reached toward his waistband, pulled a handgun, and fired four times at close range. Marcelus collapsed immediately. The shooter turned and ran toward a gray sedan idling at the curb, and the car accelerated out of the lot within seconds like it had rehearsed leaving.

Inside the restaurant, employees dropped to the floor or ducked behind equipment until the sound stopped. When it went quiet, two staff members ran outside—one kneeling, trying to check Marcelus, the other already dialing 911 with shaking hands. The call was logged at 1:38 p.m.: a delivery driver had been shot outside the business.

Tampa police officers arrived quickly and locked down the parking area. Shell casings were found clustered tightly near the walkway, suggesting the shooter didn’t hesitate, didn’t pace, didn’t argue—just stepped into place and did what he came to do. Paramedics moved fast. Marcelus was rushed to the hospital, but he was pronounced dead shortly after 2 p.m.

Nothing about it looked like a random robbery or a bad drug deal or a fight that got out of control. Witnesses described the shooter as purposeful, focused, almost quiet in his intent. No demands. No shouted threats. No “give me your wallet.” Just one question, one nod, and then four shots.

That was the first promise the case made—silent, ugly, unavoidable: this wasn’t about pizza, and it wasn’t about money. It was about someone deciding Marcelus didn’t get to go home.

Detectives from the homicide unit began taking statements from every employee on duty. Each account pointed in the same direction: the man came in looking for Marcelus specifically. Detectives requested immediate access to the restaurant’s exterior video. The footage gave them a clear view of the gray sedan leaving, though only a partial license plate could be read.

Analysts started isolating frames, enhancing images, matching the partial plate to possible registrations. Meanwhile, detectives questioned the manager about anything unusual—customers, complaints, delivery routes. The manager hesitated, then mentioned something that had felt minor before it became radioactive.

“Marcelus has been delivering to the same address a lot,” he said. “On McCalpin Drive. More than usual for one place.”

“Same customer?” a detective asked.

“Yeah,” the manager said slowly. “Name on the account… Janelle Cardu. She orders a lot, and she asks for Marcelus. But there’s never been an issue. No complaints.”

That detail landed differently in the detectives’ minds. Not a random address. Not a one-off. A pattern. A relationship, or at least a routine.

Because the incident lacked the elements of opportunistic crime, investigators treated it as planned—or at least directed at a known individual. Patrol units widened their search radius north toward the interstate, guessing the suspect used a fast escape route. Traffic cameras were pulled. Automated plate readers were checked. The clock became a weapon: every minute that passed meant the gray sedan could be a county away, then a state away.

Detectives Marcus Ellery, 41, and Raina Stokes, 38, canvassed the area around Westshore Pizza Depot, moving through adjacent lots, storage units, and small service businesses. Most witnesses had only heard the shots and seen the sedan peel out. A few had cameras pointed toward the roadway. The forensics unit cataloged the casings, photographed the scene, measured tire tracks near the curb.

Within two hours, analysts monitoring automated plate readers matched a gray sedan with partial plate alignment to one registered to Cornell Baskerville, 30, living in a small rental complex in northern Tampa. Patrol units were told to start checking his listed address, workplace, known associates.

At headquarters, investigators pulled Marcelus Drayton’s delivery logs for the past month. One address appeared far more often than any other: a McCalpin Drive townhouse under the name Janelle Cardu, 27, a medical assistant at a local clinic. Orders from her residence were consistent, sometimes multiple times per week, and nearly all had been assigned to Marcelus.

Ellery and Stokes drove to McCalpin Drive at around 4:20 p.m. They knocked. Announced themselves. No answer. No movement behind the windows. As they turned to leave, a neighbor approached cautiously.

“You police?” the neighbor asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Stokes said. “Did you see anything unusual today?”

The neighbor frowned. “This morning there were police cars and an ambulance outside that unit. I didn’t know why.”

Ellery’s stomach tightened. “This morning? What time?”

“Early. Like… breakfast time.”

Ellery contacted dispatch. A record surfaced immediately: a 911 call at 8:07 a.m. reporting a loud argument and a single gunshot inside the townhouse. Officers had entered after no one answered the door and found a woman deceased in the living room. The victim: Janelle Cardu.

Ellery and Stokes exchanged a look that didn’t need words. The case had just doubled in weight.

That was the moment everything changed.

They notified command staff and entered the townhouse to review the scene directly. The living room showed signs of a quick, contained altercation: a chair overturned, a phone shattered on the floor, a laptop still open on the kitchen counter as if someone had been interrupted mid-thought. There was no forced entry. No ransacked rooms. Everything else looked disturbingly normal, as if the violence had stayed politely inside the boundaries of one argument.

While forensics photographed the space, a specialist noticed a faint pinpoint of light near a bookshelf. It was tiny—easy to miss unless you were trained to look for the unnatural in an ordinary room. The light came from a small, partially concealed lens connected to wiring that disappeared toward the hall closet.

Inside that closet, investigators found a recording hub—storage hardware, neatly arranged, like a private nerve center. Technicians extracted the data for immediate review.

The footage wasn’t a few clips. It was weeks.

Multiple angles. Interior recordings from inside the home.

And there, in those videos, was Marcelus Drayton—entering through the front door at different times of day, often late afternoon or early evening, carrying pizza boxes and receipt slips, sometimes lingering. In some clips, he and Janelle spoke closely, sat together, touched in ways that didn’t fit the script of “delivery driver” and “customer.” The most recent file was dated March 2, two days before Janelle’s death.

Stokes watched one clip with her jaw set, then turned to Ellery. “He installed cameras,” she said quietly. “He was watching her.”

They began interviewing neighbors again with sharper questions. Several reported hearing raised voices occasionally, usually between Janelle and her husband, Cornell. Most residents believed Cornell traveled often for his job with a regional shipping company. Nobody reported an imminent danger, but people remembered tension—little moments in the hallway, tone in a voice, a door closing harder than necessary.

Now the timeline expanded, and the motive sharpened into something colder. The same gray sedan linked to Cornell Baskerville had been recorded by neighborhood cameras leaving the area around the time Janelle was killed. That placed the same person near both homicide locations within hours.

A statewide alert went out for Cornell Baskerville’s gray sedan. Officers were told not to approach alone if they located it, because whoever was behind the wheel had already taken two lives in one day and might be armed.

As detectives compiled addresses—Cornell’s rental unit, relatives, former coworkers, motels within driving distance—Ellery couldn’t stop thinking about Marcelus at the counter, receipts in hand, and that one question: “You Marcelus?” It wasn’t a confrontation. It was a confirmation.

That was the moment everything changed.

During the early hours of March 5, Tampa police located the gray sedan in a budget motel parking lot on Dale Mabry Highway. It was backed into a spot near the rear row, positioned facing the exit lane like someone wanted options. Officers established a perimeter, confirmed the room connected to the vehicle, and made a controlled entry with a key from the motel manager.

Inside, Cornell Baskerville, 30, sat on the edge of the bed. The handgun was on the nightstand. He didn’t run. He didn’t resist. He looked calm and resigned, like someone who had stepped into the end of his own story and decided he was done pretending otherwise.

He was detained without incident and transported to headquarters.

Detectives Ellery and Stokes began the first interview at 5:40 a.m. Cornell waived his rights and agreed to speak. His demeanor stayed steady—direct answers, no theatrics.

“I know why you’re here,” he said.

Stokes leaned forward. “Tell us what happened.”

Cornell described months of tension with his wife, Janelle. He said she began ordering food more often, repeatedly from Westshore Pizza, and that the frequency didn’t match her past habits. He said it made him suspect she was communicating with someone behind his back.

“I work routes,” he explained. “Overnight sometimes.”

Ellery watched him closely. “And you installed cameras.”

Cornell nodded, almost matter-of-fact. “Yeah. In several rooms. Without her knowing.”

Stokes’ voice stayed controlled. “Why?”

“I needed to know,” Cornell said. “I didn’t want to be the fool.”

He claimed he kept up the pretense of out-of-town trips even when he was actually in Tampa, letting Janelle think he was gone. Three days before the homicides, he said, he accessed the cameras remotely from his laptop and reviewed stored footage. He described seeing Janelle greet delivery driver Marcelus Drayton, letting him inside, embracing him. He said he watched parts repeatedly, including a section showing them entering the bedroom.

“It was confirmation,” Cornell said, eyes fixed on the table. “Of what I already suspected.”

He said he didn’t confront Janelle immediately. He wanted a face-to-face explanation. On the morning of March 4, he drove to the townhouse shortly after 8:00 a.m. He said Janelle looked surprised to see him.

“She denied it,” he said.

“And you told her you’d seen the recordings,” Stokes said.

Cornell’s jaw tightened. “I referenced details. She… slipped. She said his name. Where he worked. And then she said it wasn’t any of my business.”

Ellery’s voice went quiet. “And then?”

Cornell looked down. “Then I fired during the argument.”

He admitted he didn’t call 911. Didn’t attempt to help. He said he stood in the living room for several minutes, then left with the handgun.

Stokes asked, “What happened after you left?”

Cornell exhaled slowly. “I didn’t have a plan. I just… I felt like I had to confront him.”

Ellery asked, “How did you find him?”

“I searched the pizza place,” Cornell said. “On my phone.”

Digital forensics later confirmed searches for Westshore Pizza within minutes after the time Janelle was killed.

Cornell described driving to the restaurant, parking near the curb, waiting in the vehicle until he saw Marcelus through the front windows. “I wanted to confirm,” he said. “Make sure it was him.”

Stokes’ tone sharpened. “Why not call the police?”

Cornell’s eyes flickered. “I was too far gone.”

He admitted entering the restaurant, asking Marcelus to identify himself, walking outside with him. He acknowledged pulling the gun and firing four rounds. He said he didn’t speak to Marcelus beforehand.

No speech. No warning. No argument. Just four.

Investigators compared Cornell’s statements with the recovered townhouse footage. The recordings confirmed repeated visits by Marcelus over weeks, with timestamps lining up with Cornell’s documented “work trips.” The March 2 clip showed interaction consistent with Cornell’s description. Forensic analysts verified the hidden cameras had been installed months earlier, and Cornell had accessed the footage multiple times in the days leading up to the shootings.

The case looked, at first glance, like an explosive reaction. But the deeper investigators went, the more the story stopped resembling a sudden collapse and started resembling something built.

That was the moment everything changed.

By late morning on March 5, the case file reached the Hillsborough County State Attorney’s Office. Assistant State Attorney Darren Kimbro, 46, reviewed the summary: two homicides within roughly six hours, same handgun, suspect in custody, suspect admitting involvement. The narrative Cornell offered—discovery, argument, loss of control—was familiar enough that it could become a defense strategy if the evidence allowed it.

Kimbro requested clarification. “Was this an unplanned emotional collapse,” he asked, “or do we have indicators of intent formed before the shootings?”

Ellery and Stokes went back to the townhouse system and expanded the review beyond the last clips. Older footage showed Cornell moving through the residence at night, installing wiring, adjusting camera positions, testing angles of the living room and bedroom. He sat at the laptop, checking views, repositioning cameras to avoid detection. Metadata confirmed the system had been active for weeks and that Cornell logged in remotely multiple times.

A forensic team analyzed Cornell’s laptop. Alongside work files, examiners found browser entries that didn’t fit the story of a man who “just found out.” Search terms included how to retrieve deleted video, Florida sentencing double homicide, and schedules for local shooting ranges. Timestamp analysis placed some of these searches in the week before the homicides. They also documented a deletion attempt on the morning of March 4 targeting browsing data related to camera configuration. Forensic recovery restored the entries, indicating Cornell tried to scrub digital traces after the fact.

Financial records added another layer. Bank statements showed Cornell withdrew cash in incremental amounts from different ATMs across Tampa during the week leading up to the murders—none individually dramatic, but collectively several hundred dollars. Receipts confirmed he purchased additional ammunition from a sporting goods retailer a week before March 4, during a period when his time cards didn’t show scheduled firearm training or work travel.

Investigators interviewed coworkers at Westshore Pizza. Several described Marcelus as reserved and focused on delivery efficiency. One coworker, Andrelair, 29, said Marcelus mentioned feeling uneasy about deliveries to the McCalpin Drive townhouse because “the husband was weird about tips” and had appeared unexpectedly on one occasion.

“What do you mean, appeared?” Ellery asked.

“Like… he was just there,” Andrelair said, shrugging uncomfortably. “Marcelus said it felt off.”

According to the coworker, Marcelus had considered asking for that address to be reassigned, but Janelle often specified exact delivery windows when she knew Marcelus was working. That detail suggested coordination, a pattern built around Cornell’s expected absences.

Detectives also revisited neighbors. One resident, Karen Hilda, 52, reported hearing Janelle on the phone days earlier saying, “He’s watching everything now.” Hilda described the tone as frustrated, not fearful, like someone annoyed by surveillance rather than panicked by danger. It hinted that Janelle may have suspected Cornell’s monitoring had increased.

All of it—cameras, searches, ammo, cash withdrawals, careful timing—eroded the idea of a momentary snap. It painted the shape of obsession turning into action, step by step.

That was the moment everything changed.

Ellery and Stokes conducted a second interview with Cornell on the afternoon of March 5 at 3:10 p.m., focusing on preparation and digital evidence. The room was standard: table, chairs, neutral walls that seemed designed to hold any story without reacting.

Ellery placed a printed report of Cornell’s search history on the table. “These terms,” he said, tapping the page, “how do you explain them?”

Cornell shifted back. “I don’t remember typing some of that.”

Stokes slid the page closer. “Florida sentencing double homicide,” she read aloud. “Two days before Janelle died.”

Cornell’s mouth tightened. “I was trying to understand consequences. I suspected my marriage was failing.”

Ellery didn’t move. “You suspected, and you researched penalties?”

Cornell exhaled. “I was spiraling.”

Stokes then confronted him with the ammunition purchase. “You bought more ammo a week before,” she said. “Why, if you hadn’t been training?”

Cornell’s answer sounded rehearsed even if he didn’t realize it. “Target practice. I planned to start again.”

Ellery brought up the duffel bag recovered from the motel—packed clothing, toiletries, and printed directions to a cousin’s residence in Valdosta, Georgia. Cornell claimed he packed after killing Janelle, saying he intended to turn himself in but didn’t want to do it in Tampa.

Ellery read the timestamp showing the packing activity occurred the night before March 4, corroborated by motel check-in system data and hallway surveillance.

Cornell went quiet. Looked down. No explanation.

Then Ellery displayed still images from the townhouse footage: Cornell alone at the laptop, replaying clips, rewinding certain moments again and again.

“You rewound this part repeatedly,” Ellery said. “This wasn’t a single discovery. This was monitoring.”

Cornell’s eyes stayed fixed on the images. “I hoped it wasn’t what it looked like.”

Stokes kept her voice steady. “But you watched it anyway.”

Cornell didn’t deny the number of times. He just sat there like a man listening to his own decisions being read back to him in a tone that didn’t allow excuses.

Meanwhile, investigators analyzed Janelle’s phone. Her last outgoing messages, retrieved and traced, added a cruel twist. Two days before her death, she texted a close friend that she planned to stop her involvement with the delivery driver. She wrote that she needed to fix things or leave, and she expected a conversation with Cornell soon. It suggested the relationship may have already been shifting—less an escalation than a messy end approaching.

In other words, by the time Cornell chose to confront her, she might already have been trying to step back. But the cameras didn’t show intention. They only showed contact, and Cornell had been living in those clips like they were a loop he couldn’t stop.

The hinge of the whole case, in Kimbro’s eyes, became simple: Cornell didn’t act in one heat-flash. He acted after days of watching, searching, purchasing, and preparing. And on the afternoon of March 4, he didn’t lose control in a blur at the pizza shop—he confirmed Marcelus’ identity, walked him outside, and fired four times.

Four shots didn’t happen by accident.

That was the moment everything changed.

Cornell Baskerville’s trial began in November 2021 in Hillsborough County Circuit Court. Prosecutors told the story chronologically, leaning hard on what couldn’t be argued with: digital records, physical evidence, and video. The case wasn’t built on assumptions about emotion. It was built on timestamps.

Jurors were shown edited segments of the interior recordings recovered from the McCalpin Drive townhouse. In one clip, Marcelus entered carrying delivery items. Janelle greeted him at the door. In another, he left after a short period. Repeated visits, over weeks. Not once. Not twice. A pattern.

Then prosecutors introduced logs from Cornell’s laptop showing him accessing those same clips alone—opening files, rewinding, replaying, returning again and again to specific timestamps as if watching could somehow rewrite what he was seeing. They argued this demonstrated deliberate monitoring, not a sudden shock.

A firearms examiner testified that the handgun found on Cornell’s motel nightstand matched the shell casings recovered at both scenes. The toolmark impressions identified the weapon. The examiner also noted that the pattern—one close-range shot at the townhouse and four consistent impacts at the restaurant—suggested controlled aim. The medical examiner’s testimony reinforced that conclusion while staying clinical, emphasizing there were no signs of a struggle that turned chaotic in either case.

Detectives Ellery and Stokes outlined Cornell’s movements: the camera installation, the remote monitoring sessions, the searches, the ammunition purchase, the cash withdrawals, the confrontation at the townhouse, the phone search for the pizza depot minutes later, the drive, the entrance into the restaurant, the question—“You Marcelus?”—the walk outside, the four shots, the departure, the motel.

The defense presented a different narrative. They described Cornell as a man mentally deteriorating under weeks of watching recordings of betrayal, arguing that prolonged exposure could destabilize judgment. They emphasized his lack of criminal history, steady employment, and cooperative arrest as signs he wasn’t acting with calculated malice. A psychologist testified that Cornell’s perception of constant betrayal could impair rational evaluation.

Cornell’s attorney told the jury, in plain language, that his client intended to confront, not to kill, and that things escalated beyond control.

The prosecution’s rebuttal didn’t raise its voice. It raised the receipts—digital ones. The preparation data. The fact that Cornell had time to stop. The fact that he didn’t. The fact that he confirmed identity before firing.

In closing, Kimbro pointed to a phrase that echoed through the evidence without ever being spoken aloud: if you can plan, you can pause. And Cornell never paused.

After deliberating for several hours, the jury returned guilty verdicts on two counts of first-degree murder with firearm enhancements. Jurors later said the digital timeline and the pattern of preparation were decisive.

Long after the verdict, people who’d worked the lunch shift at Westshore Pizza Depot still remembered the moment the stranger walked in and the air changed. Some of them couldn’t stand the sound of the front door chime for weeks. The manager kept the security footage archived, not because he wanted to revisit it, but because he couldn’t shake the feeling that the store had been turned into a stage for someone else’s private war.

Marcelus’ coworkers remembered him as the guy who lined up his receipts like he could keep life neat if he stayed organized. They remembered how he avoided unnecessary conversation, how he followed the schedule like a promise. They also remembered the one detail that felt unbearable afterward: Marcelus had said he felt uneasy about that address. He’d considered asking to be reassigned. He didn’t.

The hidden cameras found in Janelle’s townhouse became more than evidence. They became a symbol of how obsession can disguise itself as “proof,” how surveillance can pretend to be certainty, and how the desire to control another person can rot into something deadly. The closet hub, the tiny lens near the bookshelf, the quiet wiring—none of it looked dramatic. It looked domestic. It looked like something you could walk past every day and never notice, which was exactly the point.

And on the counter at Westshore Pizza Depot, the grease-stained receipt slips kept printing the next day, and the day after, because businesses don’t stop just because a life does. Someone eventually threw away the bent, smudged stack Marcelus had been sorting when the man in the cap walked in—paper that meant nothing now, except as the last ordinary thing Marcelus touched.

That was the moment everything changed.

Years later, when people asked how something like that could happen, the answer was never satisfying. Because the truth wasn’t a single villain moment. It was a slow build of suspicion and monitoring, a loop of watching and replaying, a decision to treat a person like property, and then a decision to treat two lives like obstacles.

And if you wanted the whole story in one image, you could picture it: a tiny {US flag} magnet sitting crooked near a register, a regular workday turning sharp, and a young man who thought he was just doing his route—never realizing someone else had been tracking the route back to him.