Man pleads guilty, gets life in prison for killing of Clearwater Beach bicyclist

A Tampa man has pleaded guilty to the random killing of a 49-year-old bicyclist on Clearwater Beach nearly two years ago.

Jermaine Adrian Bennett, 28, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility for parole after pleading guilty to first-degree murder in a Pinellas County courtroom on Wednesday.

The plea change marks the first conviction in the killing of Jeffrey Chapman, who died from his injuries a half-mile away from his Clearwater Beach home just after midnight on Oct. 21, 2022. Chapman was hit more than 10 times in the chest in what police said was a random killing.

Police arrested Bennett later that day.

“It was a chance encounter that turned deadly while the victim was trying to ride his bike home,” Clearwater police Deputy Chief Michael Walek said later that day. “This was a very violent and heinous crime for no reason.”

Days after the murder, police arrested Savonne Morrison, who was 18 at the time, and charged him as a principal to first-degree murder in the fatal beating.

Bennett confessed to the killing, telling police the “ills of society” had gotten to him, according to Walek.

Police said Chapman’s murder came at the tail end of a violent series of crimes committed by the two men that night. Bennett and Morrison had gone to St. Petersburg, where video recordings show the pair randomly hitting multiple vehicles with a tire iron. Police said they then beat a man in his 70s who had been walking on the 2400 block of 22nd Avenue North, breaking multiple bones.

An hour after that incident, Morrison jumped out of Bennett’s 2014 Nissan Altima on Mandalay Avenue and pushed Chapman from his bicycle while Bennett beat him with a tire iron, police said.

The two men were set to be tried separately next year. Last week, public defenders representing Bennett and Morrison set trial dates for them.

Bennett’s lawyers offered a plea deal where he would serve 70 years in prison, but prosecutors shot it down, court records show.

Assistant Public Defender Maria DeLiberato, who represented Bennett, said her office made the offer because inmates serving a life sentence are barred from participating in programs available to others.

“It sort of limits their access to rehabilitation programs, to anger management programs, to things that would help benefit not just the client, but also the prison system at large,” she said.

Bennett had always planned to accept responsibility for Chapman’s killing, DeLiberato said. He decided to plead guilty to spare Chapman’s family and his own family from “a painful trial,” she added.

“He always sort of knew he was accepting that he would die in prison,” DeLiberato said.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Bennett also pleaded guilty to aggravated battery of a person older than 65 and two counts of criminal mischief and was sentenced to 30 years in prison and time served for those charges, respectively.

Bennett spoke briefly during the plea hearing and apologized for his actions.

Assistant State Attorney Thomas Koskinas, who is prosecuting both cases, said the state had been unwilling to negotiate a deal with Bennett and rejected multiple offers.

Koskinas said he was surprised by Bennett’s plea change, which is rare for a defendant who isn’t facing the death penalty.

“I’m glad for the family’s sake that he did that. And they got to be present and make statements. That was good, at least, for them closure-wise. I hope,” he said. “My main concern at this point is that we are able to prosecute Mr. Morrison, as he should be prosecuted based on his actions.”

Morrison, 19, will face trial on Jan. 13.

Chapman’s children were present in court Wednesday when Bennett was sentenced. In an interview, daughter Sierra Chapman said Bennett’s penalty did not bring her any closure. Neither did his courtroom apology.

“There were no tears, there was no empathy,” she said. “There was no remorse for what he had done.”

In 2010, Jeffrey Chapman started a financial company in his home state of Maine, according to his obituary. When he became an empty-nester, he moved the company to Florida and rented a home on Clearwater Beach.

Chapman regularly rode his bike around town, police said. He was a snowbird who, every six weeks or so, would travel home to Maine to visit family.

Growing up, Chapman was at one point the youngest pilot recorded in the state in the 1990s. In adulthood, he enjoyed the outdoors, canoeing, photography and stargazing.

“He even had dreams of traveling to space one day because of his infinite love for the stars, moon and universe,” the obituary reads.

Sierra Chapman said she is grateful to have inherited her father’s love of nature. When she stops to watch a sunset, she thinks of him.

“We would always go camping up at Baxter State Park” in Maine, she said. “And when we would visit him in Florida, we would walk the beach down to Caladesi.”

Chapman’s daughter said her family’s fight for justice is not over.

“Regardless of what happens to Morrison, it’s never going to bring my father back,” she said. “But at least the world will have a little bit of a sense of more safety knowing that these people can never do what they did again.”

Editor’s note: Due to a reporting error, a previous version of this story used an incorrect name for Jeffrey Chapman.