FL - Kenneth Ellis, 61, shot to death at his North Port home, 29 March 2011

[JusticeWillBeServed]

April 2016:

In teacher's slaying, defendant claims disability

http://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20160407/in-teachers-slaying-defendant-claims-disability

More than five years after 61-year-old W. Kenneth Ellis was shot to death in the foyer of his North Port home, his alleged killer remains in the Sarasota County Jail, yet to be tried.

The delay is in part because mental health experts and the legal system spent two years determining that Katrelle D'mario Johnson, now 23, was competent to stand trial for the first-degree-murder charge and other alleged crimes.

"It's horrible justice has not happened yet," Principal Jones said. "We're pretty sure who did it. We don't really understand why they did it. It just seems so stupid and useless."

Now, Johnson's attorneys have claimed he is intellectually disabled and therefore cannot receive the death penalty if found guilty of killing Ellis in March 2011.

Johnson has been in Sarasota County Jail since he was arrested for the slaying of 32-year-old Robert Mann.

At age 18 he allegedly shot Mann in the chest and Katrina Stoner, then 28, in the right leg. The drug-related shooting occurred at Mann and Stoner's Warm Mineral Springs home in the 100 block of Granada Boulevard at about 11:50 p.m.

Stoner was released from Sarasota Memorial Hospital the next day. Mann died from his injuries.

Police say the same gun used in that murder was the one that killed Ellis.