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Thread: Benjamin Jaquaric Antonio Bascom and Kelsey McFoley Sentenced in 2018 FL Slaying of Carlos Cruz-Echevarria

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    Benjamin Jaquaric Antonio Bascom and Kelsey McFoley Sentenced in 2018 FL Slaying of Carlos Cruz-Echevarria




    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
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  2. #2
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    January 11, 2019

    Man Gets Life In Murder-For-Hire Plot On Veteran


    By Patrick Murphy
    WNDB News

    Daytona Beach, FL – One man charged with first degree murder for hiring a hitman to kill a Deltona veteran who was set to testify against him learns he’ll spend the rest of his life behind bars.

    It was yesterday (January 10th) that 28-year-old Kelsey McFoley (left) was delivered the mandatory sentence of life behind bars by Judge Matt Foxman for hiring a hitman to kill 60-year-old Carlos Cruz-Echevarria on Veterans Day (November 11th) 2017.

    McFoley hired a man by the name of Benjamin Bascom (center) to kill Cruz-Echevarria so he couldn’t testify against him in a 2017 road rage incident, with Melissa Rios Roque (right) acting as the getaway driver.

    In that 2017 case, McFoley began to chase down Cruz-Echevarria after he went around McFoley’s vehicle.

    As he chased him, Cruz-Echevarria watched as McFoley pulled a gun out of his glovebox and pointed it at him. That’s when Cruz-Echevarria called police

    https://www.newsdaytonabeach.com/wnd...enced-to-life/

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    Man on trial accused of killing Army veteran in Deltona to eliminate him as a witness

    Frank Fernandez
    The Daytona Beach News-Journal

    A U.S. Army veteran thought he was helping a stranded motorist whose car was mired in a ditch in Deltona on Veterans Day in 2017. But the stranded motorist was actually a hired assassin and his target was the veteran himself, prosecutors said Tuesday.

    Benjamin Jaquaric Antonio Bascom, 28, is on trial this week charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of Carlos Cruz-Echevarria, 60, on Nov. 11, 2017. He is also charged with witness tampering because prosecutors said he tried to get his girlfriend not to help investigators in the case.

    Assistant State Attorney Joe LeDonne described the alleged plot to the jury during opening statements in the courtroom of Circuit Judge Matt Foxman at the S. James Foxman Justice Center in Daytona Beach.

    LeDonne said Bascom's passenger car was in a swale on Malaga Avenue, near Cruz-Echevarria's home in Deltona.

    "He got the vehicle stuck in a ditch and he waited for the victim in this case, Carlos Cruz- Echevarria, to drive by and offer his help," LeDonne said. "And when the defendant was ready and the victim was in the perfect position, the defendant shot the victim four times execution style and left him on the side of the road to die."

    LeDonne said that the man who wanted Cruz-Echevarria dead was Kelsey McFoley. McFoley was facing a possible prison sentence in a road rage case in which the only witness and victim was Cruz-Echevarria.

    LeDonne said that prosecutors would present evidence to show that McFoley enlisted Bascom to kill Cruz-Echevarria.

    "This was in fact a murder for hire," LeDonne said. "And the price ladies and gentleman of this crime, the price of this man's life: $1,000."

    McFoley, 28, went on trial in 2019 and was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to the mandatory life in prison without parole.

    McFoley’s girlfriend at the time, Melissa Rios-Roque, 24, is also charged with first-degree murder in Cruz-Echevarria’s slaying. At the time, she was pregnant with McFoley's child. She is being held at the Volusia County Branch Jail while she awaits trial.

    McFoley was under investigation by the FBI in an unrelated case and the feds found he had pictures on his cellphone of a police report and witness list about the road rage incident containing Cruz-Echevarria’s address.

    Before the killing, prosecutors had offered McFoley a deal of three years in prison in exchange for a guilty plea to the road rage. Now, he faces life in prison.

    Bascom's defense attorney Philip Massa told jurors that his client was innocent.

    "The evidence is going to show that Mr. Bascom absolutely could not be the person who shot Carlos Cruz-Echevarria," Massa said.

    Massa said that at 7:38 p.m. the night of the shooting Bascom was allegedly in a hit-and-run accident with Cruz-Echevarria's truck about a mile away from the shooting. He said evidence will show that the shooting of Cruz-Echevarria occurred around 7:40 p.m., but another witness will say they heard the shooting about 10 minutes before 8 p.m. and another witness said they heard the shooting at 8 p.m.

    "So the state's evidence is going to show that they have Mr. Bascom shooting Mr. Echevarria and at the same time being in a hit-and-run accident a mile away," Massa said. "That's what the evidence is going to show. Impossible."

    Massa added that a detective looking for evidence found no DNA car or fingerprints belonging to Bascom in the car in the ditch. The car had been stolen, according to investigators.

    "They never found Mr. Bascom's fingerprints in any part of that car," Massa said.

    But LeDonne, who is prosecuting the case along with Assistant State Attorney Andrew J. Urbanak, said that investigators did find a partial print from Bascom on a gasoline container.

    A detective later showed jurors the red plastic gasoline container found in the backseat of the stranded car on which investigators found the print.

    Among the witnesses on Tuesday, prosecutors called to the stand criminal defense attorney Robert Rawlins III, who was representing McFoley in the road rage case in which Cruz-Echevarria was the victim and the lone witness.

    Under questioning by Urbanak, Rawlins said he told McFoley that it was a bad case for prosecutors because it was one person's word against the other.

    "I told him it was a very weak case. We should beat it no problem," Rawlins said.

    In response to another question, Rawlins said that without Cruz-Echevarria prosecutors certainly could not prove their case against McFoley. Prosecutors dropped the case against McFoley after Cruz-Echevarrias' killing.

    The documents prosecutors provided to the defense as part of the discovery process in the road rage case against McFoley contained an address for Cruz-Echevarria, Rawlins said in response to another question.

    Under cross examination, Massa asked Rawlins if the discovery documents included a photograph of Cruz-Echevarria. Rawlins said he did not recall a photo of him being among the documents.

    https://www.news-journalonline.com/s...an/6098558001/
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    Man convicted in murder-for-hire of Deltona Army veteran on Veteran's Day, sentenced to life

    By Frank Fernandez
    The Daytona Beach News-Journal

    A hit man was paid $1,000 to assassinate a Deltona Army veteran to eliminate him as a witness in a road rage case, evidence showed. Now the hit man will pay for his crime by spending the rest of his life in prison.

    A jury of 10 women and two men deliberated for about one hour on Friday before finding Benjamin Bascom, 28, guilty of one count of first-degree murder and two counts of witness tampering in a capital felony.

    Bascom shot Carlos Cruz-Echevarria, 60, four times on Nov. 11, 2017 in the 600 block of Malaga Avenue, State Attorneys Office prosecutors said. A neighbor who heard the shots and at first believed they were fireworks found the body partially under a car stuck in the swale.

    Circuit Judge Matt Foxman sentenced Bascom to the three concurrent life terms at the conclusion of the trial at the S. James Foxman Justice Center in Daytona Beach.

    The first-degree murder charge carried a mandatory life in prison without parole while the tampering charges were punishable by up to life in prison.

    Assistant State Attorney Andrew J. Urbanak told the during closing arguments on Friday that people are used to the movie versions of hit men. But real life is different.

    “In real life, a hitman and the results of it are sloppy,” Urbanak said. They’re brutal. They’re bloody. It is tragic because there is a real life lost. It is not the movies.”

    The man who paid Bascom $1,000 to kill the veteran is already in prison. Kelsey McFoley, 28, was convicted at trial in 2019 of first-degree murder and sentenced to mandatory life in prison without parole.

    The only case remaining open is that of McFoley’s girlfriend at the time, Melissa Rios-Roque, 24, who is also charged with first-degree murder in Cruz-Echevarria’s slaying. At the time, she was pregnant with McFoley's child. She is being held at the Volusia County Branch Jail while she awaits trial.

    McFoley, who Volusia County Sheriff's Office investigators said was a heroin dealer, wanted Cruz-Echevarria dead because he was the only witness against him in a road rage case. McFoley was accused of pointing a gun at the veteran on May 2, 2017, in Deltona after the men exchange words in traffic.

    McFoley had been offered a plea deal in the road rage case which would have sent him to prison for three years. McFoley’s defense attorney had told him the state’s case was weak.

    But McFoley opted instead to have Cruz-Echevarria killed.

    That is why Bascom drove from his residence in Apopka in a stolen car to Cruz-Echevarria’s home in Deltona. Bascom parked the car a couple of lots away from the house but when he did the car got stuck in the swale.

    Prosecutors believe that either Cruz-Echevarria walked over to try to help Bascom or that Bascom walked up to the house and asked Cruz-Echevarria to help him get his car unstuck.

    As Cruz-Echevarria apparently looked under the stuck car, Bascom drew a gun and shot the veteran four times, killing him. Investigators believe he used a .38-caliber gun. But the firearm has never been found.

    The plan was for Bascom to set the stolen car on fire after he drove away from the killing. But since the car got stuck, Bascom took Cruz-Echevarria’s truck and it was torched in a wooded area in Apopka.

    Volusia County Sheriff’s Office investigators found a red plastic gas container in the back seat of the stranded car, which smelled of gasoline.

    Cruz-Echevarria’s truck was involved in a hit-and-run crash at 7:38 p.m. not far from the scene of the murder minutes after the killing.

    Bascom’s defense attorney, Philip Massa, told jurors during his closing argument on Friday that some neighbors reported hearing gunshots between 7:45 p.m. and 8 p.m. Massa said that showed that Bascom could not have been the killer.

    Massa added that McFoley’s girlfriend was in the neighborhood at 7:27 p.m.

    And he said that all prosecutors had was a partial print on a gas can found in the backseat of the stolen car. But they did not find DNA nor any other print from Bascom in the car, Massa said.

    Massa said that the cell phone records that prosecutors used to build their case against Bascom did not prove that he actually had the cell phone in his possession.

    Urbanak, who prosecuted the case along with Assistant State Attorney Joe LeDonne, said during closing arguments that no one else had Bascom’s cell phone but Bascom. Urbanak said that when he asked the panel of potential jurors on Monday how many had their cell phones with them, 38 of 40 had the devices while the other two had left them in their cars. He argued that it was not reasonable to think that anyone else had Bascom's phone but Bascom.

    Urbanak also said that Bascom’s effort to convince his girlfriend not to testify against him showed “consciousness of guilt.” It was those efforts that led to the witness tampering charges.

    https://www.news-journalonline.com/s...my/8465420002/

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