{"id":242005,"date":"2026-04-22T16:20:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T16:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/242005\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T16:20:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T16:20:14","slug":"teen-charged-with-killing-florida-stepsister-on-cruise-ship-pleads-not-guilty-nbc-6-south-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/242005\/","title":{"rendered":"Teen charged with killing Florida stepsister on cruise ship pleads not guilty \u2013 NBC 6 South Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

A teenager charged with killing his stepsister<\/a> on a Carnival Cruise ship filed a not-guilty plea Tuesday and waived his appearance at a hearing in Miami federal court.<\/p>\n

The teen has received the indictment and is waiving his appearance at an arraignment scheduled for Wednesday, defense attorney Eric Cohen said in a court filing. The 16-year-old also signed the one-page document.<\/p>\n

Cohen didn\u2019t immediately respond to an email seeking further comment<\/p>\n

The teen is being prosecuted as an adult in the death of 18-year-old Anna Kepner, whose body was found under a bed in a Carnival Horizon room<\/a> that she was sharing with him and another teen during a family trip in November.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Anna<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tKepner Family PhotosKepner Family Photos<\/p>\n

Anna Kepner<\/p>\n

He is charged with murder and aggravated sexual abuse. He has been free in the care of an uncle since his arrest in February, though prosecutors now want a judge to lock him up while the case unfolds. That issue is unsettled.<\/p>\n

Kepner was a high school cheerleader at Temple Christian School in Titusville, Florida, about 40 miles east of Orlando. The cause of her Nov. 6 death was determined to be mechanical asphyxia, which is when an object or force stops someone from breathing.<\/p>\n

Records and hearings in the case were closed to the public for weeks because the teen was initially charged as a minor. But U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom granted the government’s request to have him prosecuted as an adult. The case was unsealed on April 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A teenager charged with killing his stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship filed a not-guilty plea Tuesday and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[28,225,227,226],"class_list":["post-242005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-florida","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242005","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=242005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}