{"id":109154,"date":"2026-01-07T15:37:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T15:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/109154\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T15:37:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T15:37:07","slug":"broward-teen-agrees-to-plea-deal-in-2022-killing-of-16-year-old-football-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/109154\/","title":{"rendered":"Broward teen agrees to plea deal in 2022 killing of 16-year-old football star"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text text--small text--normal text--primary\">Published:\u00a0January 6, 2026 at 4:14 PM<\/p>\n<p class=\"text text--small text--normal text--primary\">Updated:\u00a0January 6, 2026 at 4:50 PM<\/p>\n<p>Guilty plea taken by Broward teen accused of killing 16-year-old football star in 2022 <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. \u2014 The teenager accused of killing a 16-year-old high school football player in Deerfield Beach back in 2022 has agreed to take a plea deal just as his trial was set to begin.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Keantae Vaughn said he would plead guilty to a charge of premeditated first-degree murder shortly before the first pool of jurors was set to enter the courtroom.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">He will serve a sentence of 25 years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">A grand jury indicted Vaughn as an adult when he was 14 years old after police said he shot and killed Rickey Ferguson Jr. in 2022.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Ferguson was shot in the head and rushed to the hospital, where he died several days later.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Vaughn\u2019s sentence will be formally handed down on Monday morning if and when he accepts the plea, after which Ferguson\u2019s family is expected to speak. <\/p>\n<p>\ud83c\udfe0 News From Your Neighborhood<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-article-body__copyright\">Copyright 2026 by WPLG Local10.com &#8211; All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published:\u00a0January 6, 2026 at 4:14 PM Updated:\u00a0January 6, 2026 at 4:50 PM Guilty plea taken by Broward teen&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[249,251,250],"class_list":{"0":"post-109154","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-lauderdale","8":"tag-fort-lauderdale","9":"tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","10":"tag-fort-lauderdale-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}