Man gets life for murder of bus driver
Willie L. Smith Jr. avoids possible death sentence for stabbing Gloria Riley.
WEST PALM BEACH — Dressed in identical striped shirts that Gloria Riley wore proudly as a longtime Palm Beach County school bus driver, her family gathered on Friday to hear Willie L. Smith Jr. plead guilt y to first-degree murder and armed burglary for stabbing the 53-year-old suburban West Palm Beach woman to death in November.
Smith, who faced the death penalty, told Palm Beach County Circuit Judge John Kastrenakes he understood that the plea deal assured he would never again walk free. Kastrenakes handed the 50-year-old to two life sentences in prison and reminded Smith that in Florida “life means life.”
Smith was upset that Riley had broken off their 15-year relationship, moved out of the home they shared and began dating someone else, Assistant State Attorney Andrew Slater said.
Smith broke into her apartment on Glenwood Drive, west of West Palm Beach, and waited for her to come home. When she unexpectedly returned home to grab some fruit for a co-worker shortly before noon, he attacked her, stabbing her repeatedly until she was dead, Slater said.
“I hurt someone,” he told Palm Beach County sheriff ’s deputies when he emerged from Riley’s apartment, covered in blood.
Three of her daughters tearfully told Smith they believed their mother found relief in death, knowing she had escaped his torment. “If she had to walk this earth, living in fear, she is in a better place,” Shawnta Perry, 33, of Riviera Beach, told Smith during the hearing. “Thank you for setting my mom free,” agreed Yolanda Jackson of Delray Beach.
“She was loved and she will always be loved,” said Monique Perry, of West Palm Beach, echo- WEST PALM BEACH — Saying wheelchair-bound Dontrell Stephens is homeless and in desperate need of money, his attorney has gone to court to seize the wages of a Palm Beach County sheriff ’s deputy who shot the 23-year-old West Palm Beach man.
In court papers filed in U.S. District Court this week, attorney Jack Scarola is asking a federal judge to let him garnish the wages of Sgt. Adams Lin. A jury in February agreed Lin used excessive force when he shot Stephens seconds after stopping him in 2013 for riding his bicycle erratically on Haverhill Road. One of the shots severed Stephens’ spine, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.
While the jury ordered Lin and the Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Office to pay Stephens $22.4 million, the agency is appealing the ver-