Blake Hall
Demetrius Glenn was just 16 years old when he and an accomplice beat 88-year-old Spokane native and World War II veteran Delbert Benton to death while he waiting for a friend outside a pool hall in Spokane in 2013.
Tuesday the teen plead guilty to the murder and now faces up to 16 years in prison. His accomplice, Kenan Adams-Kinard, plead guilty to the random attack killing last month and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Benton, who not only fought in the Battle of Okinawa but continued fighting despite taking a bullet to the leg, was known to friends affectionately as “Shorty”. According to those closest to him, he loved playing pool and working on automobiles.
In the initial aftermath of Benton’s death, the teens first told police that it was a crack cocaine deal gone bad – that they were attempting to buy the drug from Benton. This was quickly dismissed by authorities however, and the two were brought up on charges.
Along the way, the case stirred up quite a bit of controversy both in the court itself and the court of public opinion. At one point, the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist group, placed a $10,000 bounty on the heads of the two teens, causing the court to ramp up security and place at least one of the defendants in an adult jail.
The case’s outcome, while providing justice and some closure to friends and family members of Benton, still won’t be able to completely heal the deep wounds the loss has opened.
“Uncle Delbert was brutally and savagely beaten to the point they couldn’t put his face back together,” one of Belton’s nephew’s told the court last month. “This was not a beating. This was exceptionally cruel.”
“He was always there for me when I needed him,” Ted Denison told KXLY of his friend. “I thought of him more as a dad than I did a friend really.”