LAKE COUNTY, FLA. — A judge Thursday ruled that an alleged drug dealer was guilty of being a principal to first-degree murder in the vehicle theft and slaying of a man in 2022.
Circuit Judge James Baxley found Undray T. Benson, 53, guilty in a bench trial in the 2022 shooting of 31-year-old Antwain Hart in a drug rip-off in Umatilla.
Two other men, Deandre Anderson, 34, and Marvin H. Ellison Jr., 41, are scheduled to go to trial next week on their murder charges.
Hart was killed outside his mother’s home and his rented Jeep Cherokee was stolen. The killers took trash bags filled with marijuana out of the vehicle, then parked it behind a church, said Assistant State Attorney Nick Camuccio, who prosecuted the case. There was a minimum of 6.5 pounds of pot in the bags.
Investigators were able to track the killers’ route in a Mercedes through phone records, license-plate readers and surveillance cameras to Orlando. Ellison was arrested in Georgia.
Benson faces a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole.