Two years after a shooting at a Boynton Beach hotel led to the death of an unborn baby, the man who fired at his 7-months-pregnant girlfriend has been sentenced to 50 years in prison for second-degree murder.
Dontae Jermaine Maddox, 37, of Lake Worth Beach, went to the Inn at Boynton Beach on Aug. 3, 2023, and shot his girlfriend multiple times with one of the bullets hitting the fetus, a probable cause affidavit said. The woman, whose name is redacted in court records, survived the shooting.
Boynton Beach Police found Maddox in the hotel lobby, and as he was being detained said, “I didn’t want to kill her; I just gave her what she deserved,” the affidavit said. He told officers he waited for his girlfriend to come out of her hotel room to walk her child to a school bus stop and shot her on the fourth floor after confronting her in front of her child.
After the first shot, the woman ran down a set of stairs with Maddox chasing her. He shot her again near the second floor, the affidavit said. She was shot in her back, shoulder and thigh.
“While sitting in the patrol vehicle Maddox continued to say ‘she lucky I didn’t kill her ass,’” the affidavit said.
Dontae Jermaine Maddox, 37, was sentenced to 50 years in state prison on Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025, for second-degree murder in a 2023 shooting that killed a woman’s unborn baby. (Boynton Beach Police/Courtesy)
Maddox told officers he and the woman had been arguing in the weeks leading up to that morning, according to the affidavit.
Boynton Beach Police were called to the hotel about 12:30 a.m. the same morning of the shooting about Maddox, Palm Beach County court records show. An employee of the hotel called police after one of the guests reported she got into a physical fight with Maddox at some point earlier “and he was back to cause an altercation,” according to a probable cause affidavit in that case for one count of aggravated battery of a pregnant victim.
The woman’s name in that case is redacted in court records, though the affidavit said the woman was 7-months pregnant. She told police Maddox aggressively banged on her door, demanding to be let inside her room. He left the hotel after she said she would call police, the affidavit said.
The woman also told police that Maddox punched her and kneed her in the mouth the evening before, according to the affidavit. When officers spoke with her on Aug. 3, she was visibly injured.
“I attempted to make contact with Maddox which yielded negative results,” the affidavit in that case said.
Maddox pleaded guilty and was sentenced on Wednesday, his 37th birthday, to charges in three separate cases: The shooting that killed the unborn baby, the battery case from earlier the morning of Aug. 3, 2023, and an aggravated stalking case stemming from calls he made from the jail a few days after his arrest to a woman who had a no contact order against him. That woman’s name is redacted in the affidavit in that case, but the affidavit shows the order was connected to the two other cases.
Maddox previously spent seven years in state prison after he was convicted of attempted first-degree murder with a firearm from October 2007 and robbery with a deadly weapon from September 2007, Florida Department of Corrections records show. He was released in 2017.
