FLORIDA MAN STOPS TO HELP STRANDED MOTORIST WHO TURNED OUT TO BE HITMAN HIRED TO KILL HIM

FLORIDA MAN STOPS TO HELP STRANDED MOTORIST WHO TURNED OUT TO BE HITMAN HIRED TO KILL HIM

When police found Carlos Cruz-Echevarria dead near his home last Veterans Day, he was lying face down in a ditch, shot multiple times in the head. Beside him was a truck stuck in the mud. Later, the 60-year-old army veteran’s car was found several miles away, torched. It seemed like a random, senseless killing: authorities thought Cruz-Echevarria had been robbed and left for dead after stopping to help a stranger on a Daytona Beach roadside. But a year long investigation has revealed that it was anything but random.

The Volusia County Sheriff’s Department arrested two men and a woman this week in what they are calling a murder-for-hire plot to keep Cruz-Echaverria from testifying in a road rage case. The three have been charged with first degree murder, and prosecutors are considering the death penalty, sheriff Michael Chitwood said in a Friday news conference.

“This is one of the most heinous, despicable, cowardly acts that I’ve ever witnessed,” Mr Chitwood said. “Somebody’s gonna pay the ultimate price.”

Carlos Cruz-Echevarria was found dead near his home last Veterans Day, lying face down in a ditch, shot multiple times in the head

The killing was set in motion more than six months earlier, investigators say. Cruz-Echevarria honked at the car in front of him as it stood still at a green light in May 2017. The other driver, Kelsey McFoley, 28, pulled up beside Cruz-Echevarria at the next intersection and brandished a gun, investigators said at the news conference. Cruz-Echevarria managed to write down the car’s license plate number and picked McFoley out of a lineup later, authorities say.

News Source: independent.co.uk