A routine welfare check in Fort Lauderdale’s upscale Victoria Park neighborhood on Tuesday afternoon uncovered a scene that would set off a multi-city investigation.What police found inside a third-floor condo on Northeast 15th Avenue was just the beginning. The real horror was still unfolding 150 miles south.Officers discovered 46-year-old Larisa Blyudaya and her son, 18-year-old Ben Azizov, both dead inside the residence. The mother and son had been murdered.But as investigators processed the crime scene in Fort Lauderdale, they had no idea that the killer had already left the city hours earlier. And he wasn’t finished.
Around 11 a.m. that same morning in Sarasota County’s quiet Amberlea neighborhood, a woman heard a loud boom. She thought someone had dropped something heavy.She went about her day, not thinking much of it. But roughly 40 minutes later, she stepped outside her front door, and her world tilted.A man was lying in her neighbor’s yard, bleeding heavily. The woman immediately dropped to her knees and began performing CPR.”I think my neighbor’s been shot,” she told the 911 dispatcher in the frantic audio later released by authorities. As she pumped his chest, she added: “There’s blood all over his stomach.”The man was 61-year-old Anatoly “Tony” Ioffe. Video footage would later reveal he had just arrived home and approached his front door when he was shot. Despite the neighbor’s efforts, Tony was pronounced dead shortly after paramedics arrived.