Authorities said the suspect was working armed security when an argument outside the venue turned deadly.
SUNRISE, Fla. — A man hired to guard the door at a birthday party is accused of killing Kendrick English, a wheelchair user, after refusing to let him into a banquet hall and then opening fire during an argument, police said Monday.
The shooting happened outside Five Star Banquet Hall in Sunrise, but the arrest also pulled in Miami-Dade because the suspect, Francisco Navarro Sanchez, lives there. That detail helped explain the wording of some early television alerts, even though the homicide itself took place in Broward County. By Monday, authorities said Navarro Sanchez had surrendered, English had died from multiple gunshot wounds and the case had shifted from a chaotic overnight response to a court matter with a no-bond defendant and a judge assigned.
According to the arrest account described in local reports, the trouble started during a large birthday celebration attended by more than 100 people. Navarro Sanchez, 26, was working armed private security and checking names at the entrance. English arrived and tried to get in, but police said the guard denied entry because he was not on the guest list. Other people at the party wanted English admitted anyway, and the disagreement moved from a simple door check to a public argument near the entrance. Police said English left for a short time and then came back, again attempting to enter. That second attempt, investigators said, brought the final exchange. During the confrontation, English cursed at Navarro Sanchez, and the guard responded by drawing his handgun and firing multiple times.
Authorities said English was struck six times. The wounds listed in reporting from the arrest record were severe and spread across several parts of his body: the neck, abdomen, shoulder and forearm. Witnesses said they heard about six shots, matching the count investigators later described. English was rushed to a hospital, but he did not survive. Police said the gunman fled immediately after the shooting, then re-holstered his weapon before leaving. Detectives later contacted him by phone, and he came back and surrendered. The public case summary available Monday did not describe English as armed, and officials had not publicly outlined any physical attack on the guard before the gunfire. That left the case centered on whether the verbal confrontation alone preceded the shooting, a question likely to carry major weight as prosecutors refine their theory and defense lawyers test the evidence.
English’s death also resonated because of who he was. Local television reporting identified him as a man who had lived with paralysis since a football injury in 1995 at Stranahan High School in Fort Lauderdale. That detail helped explain why friends and family quickly spoke about him in deeply personal terms after the shooting. NBC6 reported that loved ones gathered to mourn him and remembered him as “a gentle soul.” Even without long public statements from relatives in the early court phase, that description framed the human side of the story: a man with longstanding physical challenges died outside a party entrance during a dispute that, on its face, began with a name not appearing on a guest list. The setting did not involve a robbery, a chase or a larger gun battle. It was, according to police, a brief argument at a doorway that ended in a homicide.
The procedural side moved fast. Local 10 reported that Navarro Sanchez faced a first-degree murder charge in Broward County court records by Monday afternoon, while WSVN’s early account referred to second-degree murder when describing the arrest paperwork. Jail records showed he was being held at the Broward County Main Jail after a judge denied bond. Broward County Circuit Judge Francis I. Viamontes was listed to oversee the case. Differences in early public descriptions of a charge are not unusual in fast-moving cases, especially while arrest affidavits, booking records and formal charging decisions are still being matched in public reporting. The larger point was clear by late Monday: the suspect was in custody, the victim was identified and prosecutors were beginning the formal process of turning an overnight police investigation into a homicide prosecution.
What remains unknown may shape the case as much as what is already public. Authorities have not fully explained where witnesses were standing when the shots were fired, whether security video captured the entire exchange, how much time passed between the insult and the gunfire, or whether any staff member or guest tried to de-escalate the confrontation. They also have not publicly released a detailed statement from the suspect. The answers matter because the setting was crowded, the event was private and the trigger for the violence appears, from the record now public, to have been startlingly small. Investigators are likely to keep reviewing witness statements, medical findings and any available video as the case proceeds.
As of Monday night, English’s death had left one family grieving, one defendant jailed and one South Florida banquet hall linked to a celebration that ended in a homicide case now moving through Broward County court.
Author note: Last updated April 13, 2026.