Frank Quarles was a fifteen year old teen killer from Florida who would murder Michael Coogle-Robertson
According to court documents Frank Quarles had his bike stolen a couple of weeks before the murder. He would see Michael Coogle-Robertson riding the same bike and Quarles would go home and get his fathers gun before confronting Michael. The confrontation would quickly go south and Frank would fatally shoot the other teen
Frank Quarles would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to thirty five years in prison. Quarles original trial would later be thrown out and he would be retried ending with the same result
Frank Quarles Now
| DC Number: | B16265 |
|---|---|
| Name: | QUARLES, FRANK |
| Race: | WHITE |
| Sex: | MALE |
| Birth Date: | 04/29/1996 |
| Initial Receipt Date: | 04/30/2018 |
| Current Facility: | HOLMES C.I. |
| Current Custody: | CLOSE |
| Current Release Date: | 01/27/2047 |
Frank Quarles Case
A Lantana-area man received a sentence of 35 years in prison Thursday for a fatal shooting he committed a decade ago as a juvenile.
A jury in March found Frank Quarles guilty of second-degree murder in the 2012 shooting death of 16-year-old Michael Coogle-Robertson after he had won a new trial following his 2017 conviction.
Prosecutors said Quarles, who is now 26 and was 15 at the time of the killing, shot Coogle-Robertson in a dispute over a stolen bicycle. A jury first heard the case in 2017 and convicted Quarles on a lesser charge than first-degree murder, finding that the killing was not premeditated.
The court at that time also sentenced him to 35 years in state prison.
In 2020, an appeals court overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial, finding that a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office detective failed to re-read Quarles his Miranda rights when Quarles agreed to speak after initially declining to answer questions.
Assistant State Attorney Chrichet Mixon, who prosecuted the case both in 2017 and 2022, told jurors that Quarles killed Robertson because he felt disrespected after learning that Robertson had taken ownership of his stolen bicycle.
One of Robertson’s friends testified in 2017 that Robertson purchased the bicycle from someone in the neighborhood not knowing it had been stolen and tried to sell it back to Quarles for $10 after Quarles went to reclaim the bicycle.
Prosecutors said it took Quarles about 20 minutes to reclaim the bicycle, ride home, pick up a gun he had hidden under his bed and ride back to the house on the 3600 block of Kewanee Road in the Seminole Manor neighborhood west of Lantana, where Robertson and his friends were hanging out.
“It wasn’t enough that he got his bike back. It wasn’t enough that it was over,” Mixon told jurors in 2017. “It wasn’t enough, because he was not going to let Michael Robertson or anyone out there that day make him look bad.”
In March, a six-person jury convicted Quarles after hearing three days of testimony. It also found Quarles guilty of possession of a firearm by a minor and unlawfully carrying a concealed weapon.
During Thursday’s sentencing, Circuit Judge Scott Suskauer credited Quarles with the more than 10 years of time he has served in jail while awaiting the two trials. A five-year sentence on the concealed weapons charge will be served concurrently; he received credit for time served on the firearm possession charge.
Quarles’ sentence will be eligible for review after he serves 25 years.