Salt Life co-founder Michael Troy Hutto pleaded guilty to manslaughter after being charged with the death of his 18-year-old girlfriend in 2020.
Court records show that Hutto fatally shot Lora Grace Duncan in October of that year and claimed it was an accident. He received a 12-year prison sentence.
Duncan was found dead from a single gunshot wound to the stomach on October 29, 2020. Her father found her in a room at the Hilton Singer Island oceanfront resort after tracing her cell phone there. Hutto, who was in a romantic relationship with Duncan, had registered the room but wasn’t present when she died.
Police learned that Hutto had been taken to a hospital in Jacksonville a day before the incident, where he was found “twitching, making delusional comments and crying while his eyes were rolling into the back of his head.”
Hutto told police at the time that he and Duncan were heading to the Florida Keys to visit his friends. Before seeing the friends, they stopped at the Hilton where they began “playing inside of the hotel room as if they were shooting with their finger and a gun.”
According to Hutto, Duncan was sitting on the bathroom counter when he pointed the gun and fired it at her. He then allegedly left the room, taking the gun with him.
Salt Life is a popular apparel brand whose customer base is made up mostly of those who enjoy boating, surfing, and fishing. The company emphasized on its Facebook page at the time of his arrest that he was no longer affiliated with the brand.