SAN ANTONIO – BREAKING NEWS UPDATE:
A jury on Wednesday found Louis Benevento guilty of murder. He was sentenced a few hours later to 15 years in prison.
PREVIOUSLY:
The jury has begun deliberating in the Louis Benevento murder trial after Benevento took the stand to talk about what took place the night Alicia Wills, his wife, was killed.
On May 22, 2019, Benevento said Wills arrived home from work and was very upset about something.
“She was furious and kept getting more and more aggressive,” Benevento said.
He went on to say that she hit him over the head with a metal cup, slapped him, started pulling the hair from his chest and even bit him.
At some point, Benevento said Wills called her mother and that she had calmed down a bit but then he heard a noise outside.
“She started smashing my planes and throwing them in the street,” Benevento said about the moment his model airplanes were being destroyed by Wills.
Jurors were shown photos of a bite mark on Benevento’s hand and model plane parts in the street outside the couple’s home.
Benevento said when Wills drove off, he tried to clean up the mess and when she came back he told her he wanted to leave her.
He recalled at some point she went inside to read and he went to bed. Later that night he said she woke him up and had a gun pointing at him and said she was going to shoot him.
When he tried to get the gun away from her it went off and the bullet went through the ceiling.
Benevento said at that point he went to pack his stuff to leave and Wills went outside. As he was leaving, he said he didn’t see her outside until she popped up from behind her vehicle pointing a gun at him, and that is when he fired shots at her.
During cross-examination, the prosecution said that some of the statements he gave police that night of the incident were different from what he said Wednesday on the stand. Prosecutors also said a neighbor’s surveillance video contradicts Benevento’s testimony.
Benevento said he had a stroke shortly after the incident and doesn’t recall the exact sequence of events but that everything he testified to was the truth and that he feared for his life.
Benevento admitted he did not render aid after he shot Wills.
During closing arguments, the state played the 911 call again that Wills made as she was shot with seven minutes and 45 seconds of silence following the shooting.
Prosecutors said Benevento’s versions of events didn’t add up.
If found guilty Benevento is facing 5 to 99 years or life in prison.