An expert witness has hinted at a new wrinkle in a fatal blow to an 87-year-old at a country club in The Villages.
Villager Dean William Zook died in July 2023 while in hospice care at UF Health-Shands Hospital in Gainesville. Zook was allegedly attacked by 76-year-old Robert Edward Moore of the Village of Polo Ridge in the parking lot of Glenview Country Club. Moore was apparently enraged on the evening of June 28, 2023 when he walked out of the country club and believed that Zook’s vehicle had struck his black Lexus in the parking lot. Moore allegedly began punching Zook, before realizing it wasn’t his Lexus.
Moore is facing a charge of manslaughter. He remains free on bond.
Dr. Bruce Goldberger, chief of the Division of Forensic Medicine in the Department of Pathology, Immunology and Laboratory Medicine in the College of Medicine at the University of Florida in Gainesville, has been hired as an expert witness for the defense.
In a transcript from a sworn interview given this summer, Goldberger hinted that Zook had been drinking on the night he was attacked. The transcript was filed earlier this month in Sumter County Court. Goldberger estimated that Zook’s blood alcohol level at the time of the attack was between .05 and .08. Goldberger also noted that Zook was on medication, including a blood thinner.
“I think probably alcohol ingestion is not recommended if you’re on a blood thinner,” Goldberger said in the deposition.
On that fateful night at the country club, a call was placed to 911 and deputies found Zook and his wife in the country club parking lot. The Villages Public Safety Department also responded to the scene after Zook began slurring his words and stumbled. He was transported by ambulance to UF Health-The Villages Hospital then flown to UF Health-Shands Hospital in Gainesville. At the time, he was “unresponsive.” He was placed on hospice care at Shands on July 15, 2023 and died the following day, “due to the trauma he sustained from being punched.”
Zook’s alleged attacker fled the country club parking lot prior to the arrival of law enforcement.
A detective tracked down the Massachusetts native thanks in part to the now-infamous photo of Moore showing off his hole-in-one at the Tarpon Boil Executive Golf Course, originally published in Villages-News.com. The detective also used surveillance images of Moore in the country club, where he bumped into a server carrying a tray of drinks, knocking a drink onto a patron, sitting at the bar.