A man who killed a female postie after she left a note in his mailbox asking him to come to the post office to pick up his package has been sentenced to life in prison. Trevor Raekwon Seward, 25, shot Irene Pressley, 64, after she failed to deliver large package of marijuana to his home in rural Williamsburg County, South Carolina, US, federal prosecutors said.
Seward was sentenced to life after being found guilty of murder of a federal employee in the course of her duties and other crimes in the September 2019 shooting. As reported by the Mirror, he found the note in his mailbox instead of the 2-pound (0.9-kilogram) package of marijuana from California he was expecting.
Seward then confronted Pressley a few minutes later demanding his package. According to court documents, the U.S. Postal Service mail carrier refused.
Seward then got a semi-automatic rifle and waited for Pressley to come down a street before firing about 20 times into the back of her mail truck with several bullets hitting Pressley, prosecutors said. He then drove the mail truck into a ditch on an access road at a hunting club, searched through it to try to find his marijuana and anything else valuable before leaving Pressley's body in her truck, prosecutors said.
According to court records, the marijuana package was later found on the street where Pressley was killed. In court, Pressley's sister also blamed Seward for the death of their 97-year-old father.
According to WPDE-TV, Elisha Hubbard said during Thursday's sentencing hearing that "he gave up, because you took his daughter's life", adding that he loved the treats that Irene Pressley would bring him every day. Seward listened carefully to Pressley's family as they spoke at the hearing and stood up when the judge asked him if he wanted to speak.
The local TV station reported that Seward then said he didn't "want to cause any more confusion. I don't have anything to say." The co-defendant, who helped Seward look for the mail carrier, was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Jerome Terrell Davis, 31, pleaded guilty to robbery and conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute marijuana, prosecutors said. The value of the marijuana in the package was minimal.
At the time of the murder it would have cost around $1,600 (£1250) in Colorado, where it was legal, according to state revenue data. Even when marijuana was illegal in the U.S., the value of the package would not have exceeded $2,600 (£2050), according to National Drug Intelligence centre data about South Carolina in 2000.
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