Ex-girlfriend of man accused of murdering deputy testifies

The former girlfriend of one of the men accused of murdering Broward Sheriff’s Deputy Brian Tephford in 2006 testified on Wednesday that she tried to help them get away with it.

Sonia Watts, 37, is the mother of Eloyn Ingraham’s two children, and Ingraham is one of the defendants charged with murder in the Tephford shooting. Watts and Ingraham were not a couple at the time, according to trial testimony, but they were neighbors.

He called her shortly after the shooting, she said, and she responded.

Watts said Ingraham needed her car, so she brought it to him and walked home. Later he asked if she could bring him his passport, which he said was in his apartment. Watts said she couldn’t do it because Ingraham now had her car, so he arranged for another friend to drive her.

That friend is scheduled to testify in the case as well.

Prosecutors say Ingraham was in a vehicle that was pulled over by Tephford at the Versailles Gardens apartment complex in Tamarac on Nov. 11, 2006. Minutes after the vehicle was stopped, Tephford was shot and killed in an ambush.

Broward State Attorney Mike Satz told jurors in opening statements earlier this month that Ingraham had summoned his two friends, Andre Delancy and Bernard Forbes, who shot and killed Tephford and wounded another deputy, Corey Carbocci.

The three defendants were captured the following day at a Dania Beach motel. The men had their passports and had intended to leave the country, according to investigators.

Watts was charged in 2006 as an accessory after the fact. Facing a 30-year prison sentence, she pleaded no contest to the charge and promised to testify against the defendants in exchange for a five-year probation sentence.

Prosecutors have not been able to address why the men would have decided to kill a deputy. Investigators originally believed Ingraham and Forbes had participated in the robbery of a Tamarac clothing store just a few weeks earlier. Evidence connecting them to that robbery was discovered during the investigation into Tephford’s murder.

But Ingraham and Forbes were acquitted of the robbery charge in 2015, so prosecutors cannot disclose the charge or the outcome of the trial to the jury deciding the murder case.

Forbes, Ingraham and Delancy face the death penalty if convicted. The trial is scheduled to resume Thursday.

RAFAEL OLMEDA/STAFF Sonia Watts, one-time girlfriend of Eloyn Ingraham, testified about how she brought him his passport after the 2006 shooting of Broward Sheriff's Deputy Brian Tephford.