A Florida man must spend the rest of his life in prison for the execution-style murder of a Jonesville, N.C., police officer 17 years ago, under a plea deal Tuesday that avoided the death penalty.
On Oct. 5, 1996, Scott Vincent Sica fired a 9 mm Beretta handgun nine times at police Sgt. Gregory Keith Martin during a traffic stop, according to testimony in Yadkin Superior Court. Sica was 20 at the time; Martin was 30.
Tom Horner, the Yadkin County district attorney, told the Winston-Salem Journal after the sentencing that he could not talk about the deal because two others –– Marc Peterson Oldroyd, of Rockwood, Tenn., and Brian Eugene Whittaker, of Cape Coral, Fla. — also face charges, including first-degree murder, in connection with Martin’s death. Their court dates have not been set.
On Sept. 17, 2012, Oldroyd’s cousin, Alicia Smith, contacted the FBI after she saw on America’s Most Wanted that a reward for information leading to the killers was being offered. The tip — and previous detective work done by Det. Ron Perry and others of the Jonesville Police Department, SBI, FBI and Elkin Police Department — helped lead to Sica's arrest.
