Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier will not defend a fatal road rage case prosecuted by state attorney Monique Worrell if any conviction goes to an appeals court, he warned in a Monday letter.
Instead, he may ask Gov. Ron DeSantis to suspend her. Again. It would be the latest strike in a lengthy feud between the DeSantis administration and Worrell, Orange County’s Democratic chief prosecutor, who only just retook her seat after the governor removed her from office.
Uthmeier will insist Worrell made a “plain error” in choosing to prosecute Tina Allgeo — a 47-year-old woman who shot and killed a man who attacked her in her car during a December road rage incident — if Allgeo is convicted and appeals her case. Uthmeier will also evaluate whether “further intervention is warranted.”
“Your decision to pursue this case as you have despite Allgeo’s self-defense immunity under at least two Florida statutes may very likely require my office to admit plain error on appeal,” Uthmeier wrote in the letter, accusing Worrell of ignoring the state’s “stand your ground” laws allowing self-defense killings.
READ MORE: DeSantis warns he has 'tools' including suspending local officials if they don't cooperate with ICE
Uthmeier just hours later asked Worrell to investigate a former state senator for posting the whereabouts of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents. He wondered whether the ex-lawmaker, Linda Stewart, was “harassing” law enforcement.
As Florida’s chief legal officer, Uthmeier exercises a general “superintendence” role over Florida’s 20 elected state attorneys, although they function independently of him. The power to suspend a state attorney lies solely with the governor.
“Your actions likely constitute a breach of your ethical obligations. And they may also constitute misfeasance, malfeasance, neglect of duty, and incompetence,” he continued, reciting the Florida Constitution’s provisions allowing the governor to suspend an out-of-line officeholder.
“I strongly urge you to reconsider your prosecution of Allgeo.”
When asked whether DeSantis would consider suspending Worrell, the governor’s office pointed to DeSantis’s comments at the State Freedom Caucus last week:
“If you are a prosecutor, particularly those funded by George Soros, please know that if you don’t enforce the law, I will remove you from your post.”
The Orange County Grand Jury indicted Allgeo in February for the second-degree murder with a firearm of 42-year-old Mihail Tsvetkov. Surveillance footage shows Allgeo outside of her car, taking photos of Tsvetkov’s plates. When Tsvetkov drove away, she pursued him and struck his car with hers.
A red light camera video then follows Tsvetkov as he exits his car, yanks open Allgeo’s car door, and begins to beat her, seemingly attempting to pull her out of her vehicle. Allgeo then pulls the trigger on her firearm, shooting Tsvetkov “in the face” and killing him almost instantly, News 6 reported.
Allgeo later said that she initially confronted Tsvetkov because he tailgated her and allegedly purposely hit her car with his own.
“This is a case of great public importance that needed to be reviewed by the Grand Jury to determine whether the evidence supported an indictment,” Worrell said after the grand jury indictment. “Gun violence stemming from senseless disputes will not be tolerated, and our office will hold those who commit these acts accountable.”
This isn’t the first time Worrell and Uthmeier have clashed. In April, he accused her of both slow-walking and ignoring a mounting backlog of cases. He called a press conference to send six statewide prosecutors to help her with the workload, jabbing at her alleged ties to Democrat mega-donor Soros in the process.
This followed weeks of back-and-forth between the legal politicos, which involved accusations of Worrell being “soft on crime” and Uthmeier being “uninformed.”
Before Uthmeier was sworn in as attorney general in February, he served as DeSantis’s chief of staff. He held this title in August 2023, when DeSantis suspended Worrell for allegedly neglecting “her duty to faithfully prosecute crime in her jurisdiction.”
Although Worrell failed to get the Florida Supreme Court to overturn her suspension, she won a second term in November. This unseated Andrew Bain, whom DeSantis had appointed to replace her. DeSantis had also suspended Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren but he failed for re-election last year.
“You may not like Florida’s self-defense laws,” Uthmeier wrote Monday. “But those laws reflect the simple truth that a Floridian — a woman in this case — has the right to use deadly force to stop a man from brutalizing or killing her.”
Worrell’s office did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publishing.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.
