Five minutes. That’s how fast deputies got to that Palm Coast garage after the first 911 call came in Tuesday night. And by the time they got there, it was already over.

What Happened That Night

Flagler County deputies responded to a home just after 10 p.m. following multiple 911 calls about a shooting. Not one call – multiple. That detail alone tells you neighbors heard something, or saw something, bad enough that more than one person felt the need to pick up the phone.

Inside the garage, deputies found a man identified as Rakim-Shakur Brooks dead from what appeared to be a self-inflicted injury. His wife was also found dead in the home. Authorities believe he shot her before turning the gun on himself. Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly said investigators believe this wasn’t some fight that spiraled out of control in the heat of the moment – he said it appeared to be planned. Premeditated. That word changes everything about how you read a story like this.

The Note in the Car

Here’s the detail that’s sticking with me, honestly. During a search of Brooks’ car, detectives found a note referencing the alleged plan. Not a text message, not something scrawled on a napkin in the house – a note, in his vehicle, laying out intent. That’s not an impulsive act. That’s someone who sat down, thought about what he was going to do, and wrote it down before he did it.

I’ve covered enough of these cases over the years to know that detail matters more than people realize. A note changes the entire investigative posture. It’s not “what happened here” anymore – it’s “how long had this been building.” That kind of detail changes the entire investigative posture, much like the apartment dispute prosecutors say motivated Abby Choi's murder case.

Why Did Neighbors Hear an Argument First?

Part of what the sheriff’s office is piecing together involves an argument reportedly heard at the home before the shooting. That’s consistent with a lot of these cases – there’s often a visible or audible escalation right before, even when the underlying plan had been sitting there for days or weeks already. The argument might be the spark that triggered the execution of something Brooks had already decided to do. It doesn’t mean the fight caused it. It might’ve just been the last straw on a plan that already existed.

That distinction matters a lot, and it’s one true crime coverage gets wrong constantly – treating the final argument as the “cause” when really it’s often just the trigger pulled on something that was already loaded, so to speak.

A note in a car doesn’t happen by accident. Somebody planned this out, and that’s the part that should keep you up at night.

The Part Nobody Talks About Enough

Look, murder-suicides get covered as a single tragic event, like a car accident or a fire. But they’re not that. There are two victims here, and only one of them had any choice in what happened. The language we use matters – this wasn’t a “domestic dispute that turned deadly.” This was, according to investigators, a planned killing followed by the perpetrator’s own death. Those are two very different things, and conflating them does a disservice to the woman who didn’t get a vote in how her last night went.

I say this every time one of these stories comes across my desk, and I’ll keep saying it: premeditation in domestic violence cases is a massive red flag that too often gets buried after the fact instead of flagged before it. Notes don’t write themselves the night of. Plans don’t form in five minutes. Somewhere, there was time – time where this could’ve maybe, possibly, been stopped. We don’t know yet if there was a history here, if there were prior calls to this house, prior warning signs anyone missed. Flagler County investigators are still working through all of that, and it’s genuinely too early to say.

What This Actually Means

Right now we’re left with a dead couple, a note in a car, and a sheriff’s office trying to reconstruct the final hours before everything fell apart. The investigation is ongoing, and there’s likely more to come as detectives dig through what exactly that note said and when Brooks might have written it.

But here’s what I keep coming back to – somebody wrote that note before he ever picked up a weapon. That’s not a man who snapped. That’s a man who decided. And figuring out how long he’d been deciding might be the only way anyone learns anything useful from a night that otherwise just ends in two names on a police report.