The man arrested for the crash that killed a University of Central Florida professor and his brother earlier this month now faces upgraded charges of second-degree murder, with a prosecutor saying the suspect had “knowingly risked countless lives before ending two in a blink of an eye.”
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Seminole County prosecutors filed the new charges against Marquavious Wheaton, 26, Tuesday. If convicted, he faces life in prison. Investigators said he had been fleeing from Seminole County deputy sheriffs minutes before the deadly crash.
Wheaton has pleaded not guilty to the new charges.
“We want him off our streets and out of the community for good,” Seminole-Brevard State Attorney William Scheiner said in a statement Monday. “… The victims and their grieving families deserve our best effort at justice.”
In addition to negligent manslaughter, Wheaton was first accused of third-degree murder for the July 7 killing of Christopher Marier, a UCF criminal justice professor, and his brother Tyler by T-boning their vehicle in Casselberry.
In announcing the upgraded charges, Scheiner’s office cited Seminole County Sheriff’s Office helicopter video, released last week, that captured Wheaton running red lights and weaving through traffic along U.S. Highway 17-92 at more than 115 mph before crashing into the vehicle carrying the Marier brothers.
Before the crash, deputies tried pulling over Wheaton for illegally tinted windows on a black BMW 5-series sedan rented in his name. According to court records, Wheaton was under surveillance before the crash as deputies who identified him as the driver of the BMW noted his 2023 arrest for fentanyl trafficking, which the state attorney declined to prosecute at the time.
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A deputy eventually attempted to pull over the BMW around 11:50 a.m. on July 7 but later called off the chase out of concern for other motorists, per the sheriff’s office policy. Fifteen minutes later, Wheaton crashed, with his car rolling onto the roof of the brown Mazda carrying the Mariers before partially bursting into flames.
At the time, Wheaton was on probation following a five-year prison stint for a 2019 armed robbery conviction. He could face an additional life sentence, if convicted on the murder charges because that would be a violation of his probation agreement. He remains jailed in Seminole County.
Christopher, 42, and Tyler Marier, 40, were described as loving brothers dedicated to their families. They left behind two sons and a daughter, respectively.
Christopher Marier, the UCF professor, was at the university for less than a year but was already popular among students and colleagues. At the time of his death, he was working on a paper as a co-author about police response and public perceptions of deadly force encounters.
He had previously worked at Appalachian State University before moving back to Florida to be closer to his family. Prior to academia, he was a North Port police officer in Southwest Florida from 2007 to 2013.
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