Carlos Cruz-Echevarria
Deputies: Heroin dealer had Deltona veteran killed to hush testimony
By Tony Holt
The Daytona Beach News-Journal
DAYTONA BEACH — A good Samaritan who deputies say stopped to try and help someone get his vehicle out of a ditch was instead killed in a “planned execution” coordinated by three people, according to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office.
Benjamin Jaquaric Antonio Bascom, 24, Kelsey Terrance McFoley, 28, and Melissa Rios Roque 21, are charged with first-degree murder in what investigators are calling a murder-for-hire plot to prevent the victim, Carlos Cruz-Echevarria, from testifying as a victim in a road rage case against McFoley.
Bascom, deputies said, was the gunman.
[READ MORE: Ambushed Deltona veteran’s stolen truck also involved in hit-and-run]
Cruz-Echevarria, a 60-year-old U.S. Army veteran, was killed the evening of Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 2017, at the intersection of Malaga Avenue and Puritan Street in Deltona, near his home. He was found dead near a disabled vehicle that was stuck in the grass along the road. He was also killed less than a month before he was scheduled to give a deposition in the road rage case.
The disabled vehicle at the scene was determined to be stolen out of Orange County, officials said. Cruz-Echevarria’s truck was later found burned in south Apopka.
Based on the evidence available at the outset of the investigation, it initially appeared Cruz-Echevarria was shot and killed for his truck, according to sheriff’s spokesman Andrew Gant, but detectives later learned that wasn’t the case.
“I’ve been a cop for 32 years and this is one of the most heinous, despicable, cowardly acts that I’ve ever witnessed,” Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood said during a media conference Thursday.
Bascom was linked to the disabled vehicle by DNA evidence, Gant said. Deputies said Bascom was the shooter and was hired by McFoley to eliminate Cruz-Echevarria as a witness in a road rage incident by killing him.
Additionally, phone record data from two crime scenes — the area of the shooting and from the area where the truck was found in Apopka — also linked Bascom to the killing, Gant said. His cellphone was in use in both
Deltona and Apopka during the time frame of the incidents, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
Bascom spent days doing surveillance on Cruz-Echevarria and had planned to shoot and kill him, sheriff’s Capt. Brian Henderson said.
Roque, meanwhile, assisted Bascom during the planning stages and was called to the scene to help Bascom escape after he had killed the victim, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
“They were actually stalking the victim,” Henderson said. “They were there to murder him.”
Cruz-Echevarria’s brother-in-law has an administrative job at the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office. He attended Thursday’s news conference along with his sister, Cruz-Echevarria’s wife. Both declined to be interviewed.
On May 2, 2017, detectives said Cruz-Echevarria was in his vehicle behind McFoley, who didn’t move his car after the light turned green. Cruz-Echevarria honked and passed McFoley, who later pulled up next to him at another intersection and asked Cruz-Echevarria whether he had a problem.
Cruz-Echevarria replied, “No, but maybe you do,” according to an arrest affidavit.
More words were exchanged between the two men before McFoley pulled a gun out of his glove box and pointed it at Cruz-Echevarria, deputies said. Cruz-Echevarria reported the incident to law enforcement and identified McFoley in a photo lineup provided by the Sheriff’s Office, according to the affidavit.
McFoley was charged June 1. On Dec. 7, Cruz-Echevarria was scheduled to give a sworn deposition in the case. A court document announcing the scheduled deposition was filed Oct. 23 and it disclosed Cruz-Echevarria’s address. Not long after that, Cruz-Echevarria’s house started being staked out by Bascom, authorities said.
“Carlos did not deserve to die,” Chitwood said. “You’ve got a pack of animals, (who) once again illustrate that human life is cheap on the street. A road rage incident where a man does what he’s supposed to do, notify the police (and) cooperate with the system. His thanks is to wind up with multiple bullets in his head and killed just outside of his home.”
McFoley, known to the Sheriff’s Office as a heroin dealer, has 29 previous felony charges with one conviction and nine previous misdemeanors with three convictions, according to the Sheriff’s Office. “His criminal history meant his latest charges carried the potential for significant prison time if he was convicted,” Gant said.
Bascom was arrested Wednesday by Orlando police at Orlando International Airport, where he had a one-way ticket to Texas. McFoley and Rios-Roque were each arrested Tuesday. McFoley was arrested by members of the U.S. Marshals Service Florida Caribbean Regional Fugitive Task Force while working for a moving company in Orlando. Rios-Roque was arrested by Volusia County sheriff’s detectives on Interstate 4 in Volusia County.
Henderson, who heads the Sheriff’s Office’s Major Case Unit, said Orange County detectives are looking at Bascom in killings there. He would not be more specific. A spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to messages seeking comment Thursday.
http://www.news-journalonline.com/ne...hush-testimony
Bookmarks