Neighbors had called deputies about him before, the sheriff says, yet he was still living next door to a short-term rental where three Midwestern tourists extended their Orlando vacation by a single day.
Now 29-year-old Ahmad Jihad Bojeh is being held without bond at the Osceola County Jail, charged with three counts of premeditated first-degree murder and one count of resisting an officer without violence, after a midday shooting in a subdivision near Kissimmee, Florida, a few miles from Walt Disney World, according to jail records and statements reported by Fox News Digital at foxnews.com.
Investigators say three men visiting from Michigan and Ohio were shot outside their short-term rental on a recent Saturday afternoon. Osceola County Sheriff Christopher Blackmon has described the incident as an apparently random attack, and has publicly called Bojeh a continuing threat who was well known to his deputies.
A Vacation Extension That Turned Fatal
According to the sheriff’s office, deputies responded around 12:13 p.m. to reports of gunfire in a residential subdivision near Kissimmee and found three adults with apparent gunshot wounds outside a rental home. All three were pronounced dead at the scene, local station FOX 35 Orlando reported at fox35orlando.com.
Authorities identified two of the victims as brothers Robert Luis Kraft, 69, of Holland, Michigan, and Douglas Joseph Kraft, 68, of Columbus, Ohio. The third victim was identified as their friend, 68-year-old James Puchan of Ohio, according to FOX 35 Orlando. Investigators said the men had extended their stay by one day because of vehicle trouble, which placed them at the property when the shooting occurred.
Deputies located Bojeh inside a nearby home shortly after the shooting and took him into custody, Fox News Digital reported. Online jail records reviewed by the outlet show that he was booked on three counts of premeditated murder and remains held without bond while the investigation continues. No plea has been entered at this stage, and Bojeh is presumed innocent unless and until prosecutors prove the charges in court.
For Sheriff Blackmon, the events did not come out of nowhere. In public comments after the arrests, he referred to Bojeh as a “frequent flyer” with his agency and “a threat to the neighborhood all the time,” citing what he described as repeated calls for service involving the same address.
Those remarks were reported by Fox News Digital at foxnews.com.
A Prior Shooting And An Insanity Verdict
Records obtained by Fox News Digital show that Bojeh had faced serious charges before. In 2021, he was accused of firing a gun at a person and at random vehicles in a gas station parking lot in Kissimmee, and was charged with attempted first-degree murder with a firearm and aggravated battery, according to the outlet’s review of court filings.
In that case, however, a court ultimately found Bojeh not guilty by reason of insanity. The exact evaluations and hearings that led to that outcome are contained in case files that have not yet been made public in full in available reporting. The result meant that he was not convicted of the charges, which differ significantly from a standard acquittal in Florida law.
Under Florida law, a person found not guilty by reason of insanity is typically required to undergo a separate commitment hearing. Judges may order that person into a state mental health facility, place them on conditional release under supervision, or in some circumstances, determine that they do not meet the criteria for continued confinement. The procedures and standards are outlined in Chapter 916 of the Florida Statutes, which covers mental health for defendants at leg.state.fl.us.
As of this writing, publicly available news accounts do not detail whether Bojeh was ever committed to a state hospital, how long he might have remained there, or what conditions were placed on him if he was released. It is also not clear from those reports which clinicians evaluated him or what level of outpatient monitoring, if any, was recommended.
Political Blame Over A Legal Standard
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has sharply criticized how that 2021 case was handled by the local prosecutor’s office. In a statement provided after Bojeh’s arrest in the triple homicide, Uthmeier pointed to the earlier insanity verdict and the decision not to contest it more aggressively.
According to Fox News Digital, Uthmeier said, “Prior to State Attorney Worrell’s suspension, Ahmad Jihad Bojeh was acquitted of attempted first-degree murder with a firearm and aggravated battery. It appears she didn’t put up a fight to Bojeh’s use of the insanity defense, and he was allowed to go free.”
The reference is to former Ninth Judicial Circuit State Attorney Monique Worrell, who was suspended in 2023 by Governor Ron DeSantis, a move that drew significant national attention and legal challenges, as described in her biography on Wikipedia at wikipedia.org. Worrell has argued that her removal was politically motivated. At the time of her suspension, her office prosecuted felony cases in Orange and Osceola Counties, which include the Kissimmee area.
As of the most recent reporting on the triple homicide, Worrell had not issued a detailed public response addressing Uthmeier’s criticism of how her office handled Bojeh’s 2021 case. The Florida Attorney General’s Office has not yet released a longer written analysis of the earlier prosecution on its own website at myfloridalegal.com, and court administrators have not announced any formal review of the decisions that led to Bojeh living in the community.
Repeat Police Contact, Limited Public Detail
Sheriff Blackmon has said that his agency had received numerous calls related to Bojeh in the years before the triple killing. Fox News Digital reported that the sheriff described him as a constant concern for neighbors. That level of contact suggests that patrol deputies and dispatchers were familiar with the address, but does not by itself explain which incidents, if any, resulted in formal charges or mental health interventions.
According to the same Fox News Digital report, records show that Bojeh had previous arrests for felony drug possession and for resisting an officer without violence. Those prior cases indicate repeated entries into the criminal justice system, yet available reporting does not outline the specific outcomes of each arrest or whether any judges imposed conditions that might have limited his ability to possess firearms.
Florida law allows officers or certain professionals to initiate an involuntary mental health evaluation when a person appears to be a danger to themselves or others, a process often referred to as a Baker Act, outlined at flsenate.gov. Public reports in this case do not specify whether Bojeh was ever Baker Acted, which would be a confidential medical matter, or whether any such evaluations overlapped with his criminal court cases.
What The Public Still Cannot See
Key documents that could clarify how the system handled Bojeh after his insanity verdict, such as risk assessments, hospital discharge summaries or conditional release plans, are not yet available in public reporting. Some of those records are protected by medical privacy laws. Others may be sealed or simply not yet obtained by journalists or advocacy groups.
For families of the three men who were killed, and for residents of the subdivision near Kissimmee, the unresolved issue is not only what happened on the street that Saturday afternoon. Many will want to know whether existing laws and internal policies were followed in Bojeh’s earlier cases, and if they were, whether those safeguards were sufficient to protect people living and vacationing nearby.
Law enforcement officials have said their criminal investigation into the triple homicide remains active, and prosecutors have not yet filed a detailed narrative of the alleged motive or sequence of events in court. Until those filings and the underlying mental health records are examined in full, the path that led from a 2021 insanity verdict to three men lying dead outside a vacation home will remain only partially visible to the public.
