A former Melbourne police officer and Treasure Coast first responder is on trial for murder. <\/p>\n
Otto Lenke is charged with shooting and killing Richard Benson<\/a> inside Benson’s bike shop, Fast Frank’s<\/a>, back in February 2021. <\/p>\n WATCH: State seeking death penalty for former cop<\/p>\n The crime took place just down the street from the Fort Pierce Police Department headquarters. <\/p>\n In opening statements, the state contends that Lenke not only shot Benson, but spread denatured alcohol over his body and set him on fire while he was still alive.<\/p>\n Fort Pierce<\/p>\n Friends honor master mechanic found dead after Fort Pierce fire<\/p>\n As to a possible motive, the state says Benson was dating a woman that Lenke had once been romantically involved with.<\/p>\n Prosecutors showed the jury surveillance video of the crime during the first day of testimony on Monday.<\/p>\n The state is seeking the death penalty in the case.<\/p>\n The trial should last the week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former Melbourne police officer and Treasure Coast first responder is on trial for murder. Otto Lenke is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[171,173,172],"class_list":["post-258305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258305","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=258305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}