A man accused of fatally shooting an ATV rider outside a Winter Garden apartment complex in February 2025 will spend the rest of his life in prison.
Ralph Hensel, 57, pleaded guilty on Monday to second-degree murder with a firearm, avoiding a first-degree murder trial in Orange County court.
On Tuesday, a judge sentenced Hensel to life in prison without parole — the maximum sentence allowed.
Hensel was originally charged with first-degree murder in the February 2025 death of Ja’Keem DeShun Williams, 32. Prosecutors agreed to allow Hensel to plead to the lesser charge.
In court Monday, Hensel said his counsel told him it was “a no-win situation.” The state attorney’s office said the victim’s family is in agreement with the resolution.
According to police, when officers arrived at the 1,000-block of Horizon Street, they found Ja’Keem DeShun Williams, 32, dead next to the ATV. Witnesses said Ralph Hensel, 57, walked toward Williams and shouted at him before firing two shots. Surveillance video showed Hensel had walked from the leasing office area with a firearm, moved around a nearby building, and appeared to lie in wait before shooting Williams as he rode past.
Investigators said Hensel told witnesses after the shooting, “I killed him.”
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump said Hensel had previously threatened ATV riders at the complex.
“Based on what people have told the family, who live there, he had a tendency to try to intimidate people from riding on their ATVs in the lot that was next to the apartment complex, and people did it on a regular basis and he kept threatening them, would call the police, and I guess the witnesses and the neighbors say he threatened that if the police weren’t going to do anything about it, he was gonna ‘handle it,’” Crump said in February 2025. “(…) I guess him ‘handling the situation’ meant that he waited for Ja’Keem to come riding on the ATV and he took the gun out of the office of the apartment complex and went and shot him in cold blood. And then, as I understand it, he went back into the apartment office where, apparently, an acquaintance — they said his girlfriend or someone — was there, and he just waited as if there was nothing wrong that he had did.”