ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – Jury selection is set to begin Monday in the Orange County murder trial of the man accused of fatally shooting an ATV rider outside a Winter Garden apartment complex in February 2025.
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.
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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.”
Jury selection is set to begin at 8:30 a.m. at the Orange County courthouse. Hensel faces a first-degree murder charge and could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted. He is being held without bond.
