Tony Joiner was arrested for murdering his girlfriend in 2016 after Oxygen’s “Cold Justice” helped local police crack the case
A former college football player was sentenced to 25 years in prison this week for shooting and killing the mother of his two young children in 2016.
Earl “Tony” Joiner, 37, was once the captain of the Florida Gators football team and was part of the school’s 2006 National Championship team. He was also teammates with Aaron Hernandez during the 2007 season.
Joiner, a former defensive safety, originally got away with the murder for three years before Oxygen’s “Cold Justice” television show helped local investigators crack the case.
The former football star is now facing more than two decades in prison for murdering his girlfriend Heyzel Obando with a gunshot to the temple on Valentine’s Day in 2016. Joiner had called police himself, claiming he found the mother of his two children murdered in their Fort Meyers, Fla., apartment. She was 26 years old at the time of her death.
Joiner and Obando shared two young daughters together. Local NBC 2 News reports Joiner was ordered to have no contact with the children, or the Obando family, ever again.
WINK reports Joiner’s two daughters spoke with police days after their mother’s killing, telling investigators that “poppy shoted mommy” and “mommy blood.”
Investigators were also suspicious about Joiner’s 9-1-1 call in which they say he was acting “odd” and told the dispatcher, “I’m sorry.” “If he just found his girlfriend bleeding there, why is he sorry?” Fort Myers Police Sergeant Lisa Breneman told “Cold Justice” in 2019.
But Joiner never faced charges and for years, the ex-college football star walked free, taking a job at a local auto dealership.
Then in 2019, “Cold Justice” began investigating Obando’s murder, leading to Joiner’s arrest that June at the dealership.
“I wanted to see in his eyes to see if there was any indication of remorse, but there wasn’t any,” said Fort Myers Police Detective Maalisa Langton, who interrogated Joiner.
“One thing bringing in ‘Cold Justice’ allowed us to do was to spend nine days — almost like a blitz attack — working nothing but this case,” Breneman told reporters when she announcing Joiner’s arrest. “It’s a luxury we don’t often have, because of fresh cases and other things coming in.”
Obando’s mother, Isabel Martinez, won custody of the children in 2017. She previously told The News-Press she was distraught and conflicted over her daughter’s murder.
“As a mother, I understand the pain his mother is going through,” Martinez said. “But as a mother, no one is going to take my pain away. Now that he is arrested, I hope he feels the weight of the law.”
Brayan Obando, Hayzel’s sister, told WINK this week that her nieces had “absolute joy” after Joiner was sentenced. But still, the family is angered over Joiner and what he took from Obando.
“She always wanted to be a mother,” Brayan told the outlet. “She finally had that chance, just for it to be taken away.”