New charges have been filed against an active duty Marine Willie Ellington in connection to the killing of a former reality TV star.
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For context, according to WKRG News 5, Tshey Bennett’s body was found Wednesday (Dec. 18) in a pond in an abandoned neighborhood in Alabama, though she’d last been seen at the Sweet Dream Inn in Pensacola, Fla.
According to a Facebook post posted by local authorities in Florida, Bennett was working as an escort at the location when she vanished, which was 50 miles away from where she was eventually found.
The same day police found her body was also the same day Ellington was arrested in another town over 200 miles away and taken into custody. There’s been no word yet on just how Bennett was killed or how she ended up in that pond.
Now per the New York Post, on Friday, the 20-year-old military man has been been charged with first degree murder and possession of child pornography. Alabama authorities were able to find him after being tipped off to his location at a bus stop in Opelika, Ala.
“Our team quickly scrambled to the station and set up a surveillance operation. When the bus arrived, investigators spotted and apprehended a man matching the suspect’s description,” Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones told the outlet.
As confirmed by the Pensacola News Journal, Ellington is “a private first class in the US Marine Corps” serving in the Training and Education Command. He was stationed onboard at the Naval Air Station Pensacola where he received specialized training in aviation, cyber, explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) and combatant dive communities as a part of the Marine Aviation Training Support Group-23 (MATSg-23), per the Marine Corps.
According to Capt. Jacoby Getty of the Training and Education Command, they are aware of Ellington’s arrest and have agreed to work in tandem with local authorities.
Bennett was one of 12 contestants and exotic dancers on the first season of the HollyHood TV series “Skrippa Bootcamp.”
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