ESCAMBIA COUNTY, Fla. – A 20-year-old U.S. Marine accused of killing a 26-year-old woman who was in a reality TV show searched on Google if it was possible to scream while being strangled, police said.
On Dec. 14, Escambia County Sheriff’s Office deputies learned Tshey Bennett — who had participated in HollyHoodTV’s Skrippa Bootcamp series as an “aspiring and elite dancer” — had vanished on Dec. 13.
On Dec. 18, detectives found Bennett’s body in a pond on Dec. 18 in Mobile, Alabama, and arrested Pfc. Willie Ellington, their murder suspect, in Opelika, Alabama.
Detectives reported Ellington, an active-duty U.S. Marine onboard Naval Air Station Pensacola, met Bennet at the Sweet Dream Inn in Escambia County before she vanished.
Morgan Lewis, a spokesman for ECSO, told Military.com on Thursday that Bennett’s car and cell phone were at the Sweet Dream Inn and the bedding wasn’t in her room, so the homicide investigation started “pretty quickly.”
According to Lewis, some of Ellington’s Google searches included, “Can someone scream when they’re strangled?” “What is the statistic of prostitutes homicides being solved” and “How does a dead body look in two days?”
U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Jacoby Getty told The Pensacola News Journal Ellington was assigned to Marine Aviation Training Support Group-23.
Ellington is facing charges of first-degree murder and possession of child pornography.
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