FORT PIERCE, Fla. \u2014 A former Melbourne police officer and Treasure Coast first responder has been sentenced to death.<\/p>\n
Otto Lenke was found guilty<\/a> in May of shooting and killing Richard Benson<\/a> inside the victim’s bike shop, Fast Frank’s<\/a>, back in February 2021.<\/p>\n WATCH BELOW: Former police officer sentenced to death for killing mechanic<\/p>\n Former police officer sentenced to death for killing mechanic in Fort Pierce<\/p>\n The crime happened just down the street from Fort Pierce Police Department headquarters.<\/p>\n Prosecutors showed the jury surveillance video of the crime during the trial back in May.<\/p>\n Lenke not only shot Benson, but spread denatured alcohol over his body and set him on fire while he was still alive.<\/p>\n As to a motive, prosecutors noted Benson was dating a woman that Lenke had once been romantically involved with.<\/p>\n Assistant State Attorney Brandon White told WPTV that justice was served and he’s pleased that this part of the legal process is done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT PIERCE, Fla. \u2014 A former Melbourne police officer and Treasure Coast first responder has been sentenced to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[111932,3886,171,173,172,111931],"class_list":["post-428789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-otto-lenke","tag-fort-pierce","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news","tag-richard-benson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428789","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=428789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}