Jury selection will begin this week in the sentencing trial that will determine whether a man who massacred five women in a Florida bank in 2019 will spend the rest of his life in prison or be executed.
Zephen Xaver, now 27, strode Jan. 23, 2019 into a bank in Sebring, Fla., mowed down four bank employees and a customer and then called the police. He pleaded guilty last year to five counts of first-degree murder, but numerous delays held up the sentencing trial.
The killer randomly picked the SunTrust bank branch in Sebring, about 84 miles southeast of Tampa, walked in and told bank teller coordinator Marisol Lopez, 55, to lock the doors. He then ordered her and the four others in the lobby to stand against the wall before demanding they lie facedown on the floor.
Highlands County Sheriff’s Office via AP
This Jan. 23, 2019, booking photo released by the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office shows Zephen Xaver. (Highlands County Sheriff’s Office via AP)
After that he shot them one by one, then called police and barricaded himself inside for two hours before surrendering.
Murdered were customer Cynthia Watson, 65, who had gotten married less than a month earlier; Lopez, a mother of two; 38-year-old mother of seven and banker trainee Ana Pinon-Williams; 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.
Police said at the time that robbery did not appear to be a motive. Xaver’s ex-girlfriend said later that he had long expressed a fixation with killing people, that he “always hated people and wanted everyone to die” and that her warnings about him were not taken seriously. He had quit his job as a prison guard trainee two weeks before the killings.
After two weeks of opening statements, the trial is expected to last two months.
With News Wire Services
