Co-workers still mourn Nick Lampp at the Target in Royal Palm Beach. His killer said he acted in self-defense. A judge, and Nick's family , said no.
Hannah Phillips|Palm Beach Post
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ROYALPALM BEACH — NicolasLampp haddog treats in one handand a Jack Russell Terrier named Pebblesin the other when his girlfriend’s dadshot him in the head.
"You will never hurt my child again," Joseph Hamiltonsaid he told Lampp on Feb. 27, 2021,moments before pulling the trigger. "I promise you to the death: You will not hurt my child again."
The narrative of the abusive boyfriend and avenging father is the one that spread following Hamilton's arrest for murder on March 2, 2021. But as details of his killer's story havebegun to crumble under scrutiny, Lampp's mother, for the first time, is sharing her own.
Nick Lampp never hurt his girlfriend, Patty Lamp said.She sat outside the West Palm Beach courthouse a year and a half after her son's deathand took a long, slow drag of hercigarette. She shook her head.
To lose a child to murder isone thing, she said.To hear his killer try to justify itis another thing entirely.
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First responders found her23-year-old son unarmed and bleeding to death on the groundoutside of his Royal Palm Beach apartment complex. Hamilton had fled from the parking lotby then, stashing pieces of his gun in canals and trash cans across Palm Beach County while sheriff's deputies searched for a suspect.
"You need to look at thefather," Patty Lampp said she told detectives at the hospital. It was no secret that he and Lampp hada contentious relationship.
She was right. Hamilton's confession came three days laterat the tail end of a lengthyinterrogation with deputies, and on the same day Lampp's parents took their sonoff life support. Hamilton denied shooting him initially, reversing course onlyafter detectives presented him with surveillance-camera footage that tied him to the murder.
"Yes, I grabbed my piece, and I defended myself," Hamilton said.
He didn't like his daughter's boyfriend— he said as much to detectives. He'd thought the young man was controllingand narcissistic, and he'd had enough of himdriving a wedge between him and his daughter.
Hamilton called her that morning to demand that she break up with Lampp, but she resisted. Sohe took an Uber to the Trails at Royal Palm Beach apartment complex and told deputies he planned to demand that Lampp break up with her.
When he found him out front walking Pebbles, heshot him to death instead.
It would take another 18 months for the court torejectthe father's claim that he took Lampp's life because he feared for his own.Lampp was falling backward or alreadyon the ground when Hamilton shot him in the head, wroteCircuit Judge Sarah Willis in August. He was unarmed.
She denied Hamilton's motionto dismiss the first-degree murder charge under Florida's "stand your ground" statute, which permits the use of deadly force for self-defense. It's a victory for Lampp's parents, but their fight isn't over yet.
Hamilton can still persuadejurorsthat he acted in self-defense should his casego to trial. Until he's sentenced or accepts a plea deal, Patty Lampp said each visit to the courthouse is like an old wound reopening.
It's also a chanceto correct the narrative.
"Nick was nothing like heportrayed him to be," said Lampp's father, Glenn. He motioned behind him, to the courtroom where the judge spent two hours listening to Hamilton's interrogationAug. 8."He can tell whatever story he wants now because there's no opposition, because Nick's dead."
To find out who Lampp really was, he said: Go to Target.
Remembering Nick Lampp: The grin, the goatee, the friendships
Walk slowly through theaisles of the massiveSuper Targeton Okeechobee Boulevard at State Road 7 in Royal Palm Beach,and you're likelyto spot mementos of the dark-haired young man who used to work there.
Thewords "RIP NICK" are stuck to his old colleagues'nametagsand tattooed across the arm of his shift manager, 38-year-old Shane Salas. In the space between his elbow and wrist is an image of Deadpool, too.He was Lampp's favorite superhero.
After Lampp died, employees installed a bench in the northeast corner of the parking lot and planted a smalltree near it with wind chimes in its branches.
There's an engraved photo of Lampp, his ears pierced and chin goateed, and Pebblesat the tree's base, surrounded by knickknacks: crosses, painted rocks,dream catchers, plastic flowers and a Deadpool bauble. The pile is always growing.
This is where Lampp used to park his car for work, but Salas goes there now to remember. He pointed at the enamel pin on his shirt— a heart with wings on it, and the words“I gotchu” in the middle.
“That’s what Nick used to tell his team members,” Salas said, and his voice wavered. “Anytime they needed anything, he’s like, ‘I gotchu.'“
Lampp moved from the Tampa area to Royal Palm Beach in 2017with his sights set on saving enough money to buy a car. The 19-year-oldworked at Jet's Pizza as often as he could, returningto hisgrandmother's home in between for sausage and peppers.
Hamilton's daughter, Makayla,worked at Jet's, too, Patty Lampp said, and the pair quickly became friends. She said she met the girl on Christmas Eve 2018, after her father had locked her out of the house.
They invited her inside, kicking off what would become a two-and-a-half-year-long relationship, and a widening gulf between the girl and her father. He'd complain about it in a recorded interview withdetectivesyears later.
The Post's attempts to reach Makayla Hamilton for comment were unsuccessful. Neither she nor anyone else from Hamilton'sfamily appeared at his court hearing in August. Posts to her public Facebook page aresparse, save for a tribute she wrote to Lampp three months after he was killed.
"You were my future," she wrote. "And you were taken away way too soon."
Lampp began working at Target in December 2017 as a seasonal hire, meant only to help out for the holidays. But he picked up shifts where he could, working overtime and rubbing shoulders until there was no other choice but to keep him around.
It's what he always did, said his grandmother, Hope Lettieri. Thekid could sell anything, but he was best at selling himself.He'd come home from work with a dimpled smile, and she'd know he'd done it again.
"You fell into more green s***, didn't you?" she'd ask, and he'd grin wider. "Sixty-five cents an hour more."
At work, Lampp liked to lock eyes with his coworkers during the pandemic and pull his face mask down beneath his chin for a split second, flashing whatever new, ridiculous pattern of facial hair he'd spent the last week growing, Salas said.
He could befriend anyone, and he made it a point to.When Lampp left Jet's Pizza in Royal Palm Beach to work full-time at Target,a whole slew of colleagues followed.
"Literally every single person left and came to Target," Salas said. "They really, reallyloved him."
His final words, stored in a voicemail,haunt his mother: 'Love you'
His memories of their son are a comfort to Patty and Glenn Lampp, who had only gottenglimpses of the young man hewas becoming. Through Salas'eyes, they see him walking red-faced and sweaty through Target's toy department,moving merchandisewhile his colleagues looked on, bemused.
"You're going crazy here, like, it's Target," Salas would laugh. "Calm down."
But he was serious about buyingthatcar, his grandmother said. By 20 years old, and once he'd saved up $10,000, he did.
"It was a little white convertible,"Lettieri said. "He loved that car."
When Patty Lampp drovefrom her Tampa-area home Tuesday to prepare for the potential trial against her son's killer, she stopped, as she always does, at his memorial.She pulled out her phone and playeda voicemail Lampp left her 15 minutes before he was shot.
"Hey, it's me," Lampp said. His voice was low and untroubled. "I work at 3 today, but I'll take my meal at 6. If you can, give me a call back before then. Love you."
It hurts to hear him, but she keeps the voicemail just a few taps away, anyway.
It's like the shrine to Lamppin the room she rarely goes in anymore, or the Tupperware of sausage and peppers left untouched in her mother's freezer.
Glenn Lampp doesn't like to look at old photographs, and 3-year-old Pebbles cowers at the sound of fireworks and thundernow.Still, Lettieri said, she thinks sheknows what Lampp would say if he could see them all now.
"Boo! I gotchu."
Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her athphillips@pbpost.com.
