A co-founder of the clothing company Salt Life was sentenced to 12 years in prison Thursday after pleading guilty to fatally shooting his teenage girlfriend — before leaving her body to decompose in a Florida hotel.
Michael Hutto, 56, entered the guilty plea in Florida Thursday, accepting responsibility for the killing of 18-year-old Lora Grace Duncan on the Hilton Singer Island oceanfront resort in Oct. 2020.
He claimed he unintentionally gunned down the teenager during a mock shooting game, reported the station WPTV.
Hutto was later arrested in his hometown of Jacksonville, 280 miles from the crime scene, after fleeing.
In keeping with a probable cause affidavit, Duncan’s father had called the police and requested a welfare check after not hearing from his daughter for several days.
The dad used an app to trace his daughter’s cellphone to the Hilton hotel, where police arrived to find her blood-soaked, decomposing body with a gunshot wound to the stomach.
The hotel room where the grim discovery was made had been rented in Hutto’s name, and his wallet and ID card were found contained in the room, police said on the time.
A day before Duncan was found dead, Hutto had been taken to a hospital in Jacksonville after he was found sitting in his illegally parked automobile in a St. Augustine gas station.
The businessman was reported to have been “twitching, making delusional comments and crying while his eyes were rolling into the back of his head,” based on the affidavit.
When detectives questioned Hutto about his girlfriend, the then-54-year-old man was quoted as telling them, “Oh, my God, I feel I hurt my Gracie,” after which burst into tears.
During a subsequent interview, Hutto told police that he and Duncan were en path to the Florida Keys to go to friends once they stopped on the Hilton.
After spending time on the beach together, Hutto said he and his girlfriend were “playing within the hotel room as in the event that they were shooting with their finger and a gun.”
Hutto said that Duncan was sitting on the counter in the toilet when he pointed a gun at her and it fired, with one round striking her.
Hutto said he then placed the gun in his Adidas backpack, jumped in his green Dodge and sped away, driving until he ran out of gas.
Duncan’s father claimed that Hutto had been plying his teen daughter with drugs and keeping her sedated.
After pleading guilty to a charge of manslaughter with a firearm, Hutto was immediately sentenced to 12 years in prison, with credit for 79 days served.
Hutto and a number of other friends began Salt Life Apparel in 2003, its brand geared toward boaters, surfers and fishermen who spend time on the ocean. Hutto is credited with coming up with the name.
In 2013, Hutto and his fellow co-founders sold the business for nearly $40 million.
