VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. – A Florida therapist who specializes in anger management has been taken into custody and charged with murdering a man following an ongoing dispute.
The suspect was identified as 46-year-old Travis McBride. He is the owner of Starting Point Mental Health in the city of DeLand. He was arrested after police first responded to a call regarding a suspicious incident shortly after 7:00 a.m. Thursday at a home in the 100 block of S. Frankfort Ave. in DeLand.
During the investigation, police located the body of 51-year-old Clinton Dorsey. He had been fatally shot and stuffed into the trunk of a vehicle near the intersections of Frankfort Ave. and New York Ave, WESH reported.
“There’s been a murder that happened,” a 911 caller told a dispatcher. “We got a couple of eyewitnesses, and I believe … the person right now he’s looking at the road, cleaning up the blood off the ground. I just saw him drag the body across the road. He put it in his car, and then he left.”
The witness added, “And then he came back, and not even 10 minutes ago he started scrubbing the road, and now I see him in the yard with a flashlight looking around.”
According to WKMG, Capt. Prurince Dice with the DeLand Police Department said, “Once we got to the area, we located some shell casings from a firearm and located some blood in the street.”
Police then discovered Dorsey’s body inside the trunk of McBride’s red Nissan Versa near the intersection of Frankfort Ave. and New York Ave., authorities confirmed.
During a search of the immediate area, police found McBride walking nearby and took him into custody, the New York Post reported.
“We believe there was an ongoing dispute between McBride and our victim. I don’t know if they knew each other, but they knew of each other. It unfortunately ended in one man’s death,” Police Chief Jason Umberger said.
A female neighbor said McBride came to her residence the day before looking for Dorsey because he “put glass in a jar for his dogs,” Fox 35 Orlando reported, citing an arrest affidavit.
McBride reportedly said to the woman that he intended to kill Dorsey, whom she described as a “homeless guy who lives in the woods across the street from her house,” according to the affidavit.
When McBride was taken into custody, he had injuries on his hands. He reportedly said the wounds resulted from training dogs and from “shooting,” according to Fox 35.
The criminal defendant was booked at the Volusia County Jail on the charge of first-degree murder and is being held without bond.
McBride opened Starting Point Mental Health on East New York Avenue in DeLand in 2009, according to its website, the New York Post reported.
“Placing a strong emphasis on maintaining a solid, trusting relationship with his client’s (SIC) Travis has worked extensively with individuals, couples, groups, and families on resolving a wide variety of mental health concerns,” the site states.
“Travis has provided therapeutic services to adolescents who have entered the justice system for a variety of reasons and to individuals and families impacted by the natural disasters Central Florida has faced in recent years,” according to the business.
McBride’s listed areas of expertise include anger management, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and bipolar disorder.
Interestingly enough, the “anger-management specialist” and now-accused killer has a criminal history, which includes an arrest in 1995 for felony aggravated battery, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported.
Ultimately, he pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor battery and completed a deferred prosecution agreement, according to the news outlet.
However, in 1996 he was arrested once again on another felony charge of aggravated battery. The charge was later reduced to a misdemeanor and he was sentenced to probation, the News-Journal reported.
McBride was arrested in 2017 on a charge of domestic battery by strangulation stemming from an argument about the couple’s dog. He denied choking his then-wife and she said she didn’t want to pursue charges.
However, he completed a deferred prosecution agreement that included fines, no violent contact with the victim and counseling, according to the paper.
According to his LinkedIn page, McBride attended the University of Central Florida where he earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2005 and a master’s in clinical psychology in 2007.
His bio also said he previously owned Central Florida Mental Health, where he also served as a therapist.
