A prison releasee fathered a Central Florida 15-year-old’s baby and then he got more time locked up.
37-year-old Tevaris D. Holmes seduced and impregnated a 15-year-old Merritt Island girl in 2022 shortly after his release from prison. Now he will spend 30 more years in lockup after his conviction for lewd and lascivious battery on a child.
The Brevard County Sheriff’s Office investigated in October 2022 after the girl’s parents called to report the inappropriate relationship and pregnancy. During a controlled phone call monitored by an agent, Holmes conceded he had sex once with the girl and “should have been a better person.”
A jury found Holmes guilty as charged based on evidence presented at trial by Assistant State Attorneys Sara Flenniken and Rebecca Price. Evidence included a recorded phone call in which the victim’s exasperated mother confronted Holmes and got him to acknowledge he was the father of the girl’s child.
In a second trial phase, Price successfully made the case to jurors that Holmes should be sentenced as a Prison Releasee Reoffender and Habitual Felony Offender based on his past criminal record. Those classifications allowed the judge to double Holmes’ likely sentence for the sex crime from 15 years to 30 years, which Flenniken argued for at sentencing, commenting that “this case is what the maximum penalty is made for.”
When the mother asked Holmes if he was going to help take care of the baby, he replied: “If I’m out of jail, of course.”
Before his recent trial, Holmes was arrested in 2023 and sentenced in 2024 to seven years in prison for trafficking fentanyl, possession of cocaine with intent to sell, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. He previously served time in the Brevard County Jail and state prison for offenses including drug possession, making written threats to kill, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, habitually driving while license revoked, and unlawful use of a two-way communication device.
