Left: Willie Richard Ellington (Lee County Sheriff’s Office). Right: Tshey Bennett (Escambia County Sheriff’s Office).
An active duty U.S. Marine stationed off the coast of Florida was charged with first-degree murder after a woman’s body was found in nearby Alabama.
On December 18, Willie Richard Ellington, aged 20, was apprehended in Alabama on the same day Tshey Bennett’s body, a 26-year-old escort, was discovered in a pond in Mobile. Bennett was reported missing on December 14, as noted by the Escambia County authorities. Ellington and Bennett were linked to a hotel in Pensacola, Florida, where Bennett was last sighted alive on December 13.
Ellington, reportedly stationed at NAS Pensacola off Florida’s west coast in the Gulf of Mexico, was intercepted by investigators just as he was about to board a bus in Alabama. Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones informed Pensacola CBS affiliate WKRG that their team acted swiftly upon intelligence gathered and successfully apprehended Ellington upon the arrival of the bus, matching the suspect’s description.
Reports indicate that Bennett met Ellington as an escort around 4 p.m. on the day she was last seen alive. The pair checked into the Sweet Dreams Inn in Pensacola. Initially considered a missing person, the circumstances surrounding Bennett’s disappearance raised suspicions prompting a homicide inquiry. Bennett’s body was discovered on December 18 in a Mobile pond, 50 miles away from the hotel. Authorities confirmed that Bennett was murdered in Florida, not in Alabama.
According to The Independent, Bennett was a mother of one child and once appeared on a reality show — HollyHoodTV’s “Skrippa Bootcamp” — that featured exotic dancers. Her cause of death was not made public.
Ellington was charged with one count of first-degree murder and one count of possession of child pornography. He is being held at the Lee County Detention Center without bail.
