A Florida Keys man was sentenced to life for shooting a deputy in 2015. Police now say he was the gunman behind the cold case killing of a teen.
On June 25, 2010, Timothy Thomas, 33, broke into the home of 16-year-old Sebastian Ochsenius in Gainesville, Florida, and shot him to death in the kitchen, according to investigators. Thomas was arrested on murder and burglary charges, court records show.
Thomas was jailed for life in 2018 after being convicted of shooting a Monroe County Sheriff’s Office deputy in the chest during a shootout three years prior on Stock Island.
“This family has had to endure this for 13-and-a-half years to get to the point of having some better understanding of what occurred here and why it occurred,” State Attorney Brian Kramer said at a Monday news conference .
At around 3:40 a.m., the high school honors student, who had been playing video games, encountered the burglar while heading into the kitchen for something to drink. After waking up to the sounds of gunfire, Sebastian’s family found his body riddled with bullets on the floor, Alachua County Sheriff Emery Gainey said.