The Highlands County jury voted 9-3 to recommend that Zephen Xaver receive the death penalty for the Jan. 23, 2019, massacre at the SunTrust Bank in Sebring, a community about 85 miles southeast of Tampa.The final sentencing decision rests with Circuit Judge Angela Cowden, who could reject the jury's recommendation and sentence Xaver, 27, to life in prison without parole. The judge is expected to set a sentencing date later.
Assistant State Attorney Bonde Johnson also told jurors during closing arguments that the defendant carried out the mass shooting at Sebring's SunTrust bank to satisfy his yearslong desire to experience killing, forcing the women to lie down before executing them. “We ask you to show Zephen what he may least deserve — compassion, grace and mercy,” McNeill said, her voice breaking before the jury began its deliberations. “Compassion is not a limited resource. Grace is not limited. Mercy is not limited. Sentencing Zephen to life is the right thing to do.”
Xaver's victims included customer Cynthia Watson, 65, who had been married less than a month; bank teller coordinator Marisol Lopez, 55, who was a mother of two; banker trainee Ana Pinon-Williams, a 38-year-old mother of seven; bank teller Debra Cook, a 54-year-old mother of two and a grandmother; and banker Jessica Montague, 31, a mother of one and stepmother of four.
“It’s all I can think of, it’s all I hear every day and it’s all I see every day. It’s all I smell and taste every day: blood, death and murder. It’s all I have happening 24/7,” Xaver wrote a friend. He made similar posts online.
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