FORT PIERCE, Fla. \u2014 A former Melbourne police officer and Treasure Coast first responder has been convicted of murder in the 2021 shooting death of a Fort Pierce motorcycle mechanic.<\/p>\n
Otto Lenke was found guilty of shooting and killing Richard Benson<\/a> inside Benson’s bike shop, Fast Frank’s<\/a>, in February 2021.<\/p>\n Former officer convicted of murdering Fort Pierce motorcycle mechanic<\/p>\n Prosecutors said Lenke not only shot Benson, but then set him on fire while he was still alive.<\/p>\n The state is seeking the death penalty in the case. <\/p>\n A sentencing hearing is expected to begin on May 18.<\/p>\n This\u00a0story\u00a0was\u00a0reported\u00a0on-air\u00a0by\u00a0a\u00a0journalist\u00a0and\u00a0has\u00a0been\u00a0converted\u00a0to\u00a0this\u00a0platform\u00a0with\u00a0the\u00a0assistance\u00a0of\u00a0AI.\u00a0Our\u00a0editorial\u00a0team\u00a0verifies\u00a0all\u00a0reporting\u00a0on\u00a0all\u00a0platforms\u00a0for\u00a0fairness\u00a0and\u00a0accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT PIERCE, Fla. \u2014 A former Melbourne police officer and Treasure Coast first responder has been convicted of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[111932,3886,1933,23490,171,173,172],"class_list":["post-263902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-otto-lenke","tag-fort-pierce","tag-murder","tag-murder-conviction","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\/263902","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=263902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}