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By Staff Writers
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – In a significant development in a long-standing case, Timothy Eugene Thomas, 35, has received two additional life sentences after entering a plea of nolo contendere for the 2010 murder of 16-year-old Sebastian Ochsenius. These sentences add to his three existing life terms.
The tragic incident occurred on June 29, 2010, when an intruder broke into the Ochsenius residence through a sliding glass door around 3:45 a.m. Sebastian was playing video games with a friend at the time in their home, located near the Millhopper Branch Library. His friend recounted that Sebastian had gone to the kitchen when gunshots rang out. Rushing to his side with Sebastian’s father, they found him fatally wounded. Despite their quick response, neither saw the shooter, and Sebastian succumbed to his injuries shortly afterward.
While details remain sealed, new evidence came to light in 2020. This prompted the Alachua County Winter Term Grand Jury to indict Thomas on December 14, 2023, on charges of homicide in the course of trafficking and armed burglary. Thomas subsequently entered a plea of nolo contendere to both charges, leading Judge Robert Groeb to impose two life sentences without the possibility of parole.
In a letter to Judge Groeb, Thomas’s mother asserted that her son was in the company of Jaxon Coleman and an unidentified woman on the night of the murder. According to her, they traveled to Gainesville with the intention of robbing a house for drugs, specifically marijuana, before heading to Tallahassee. She claimed Coleman’s DNA was discovered on a shirt left at the crime scene, and alleged that Coleman named Thomas as the shooter in exchange for total immunity. While she admitted to accepting her son’s guilt in previous cases after reviewing the evidence, she now contends that the current evidence implicates Coleman more than Thomas.
Thomas’s criminal history includes an arrest in Orange County for armed robbery in 2011 that led to four years in state prison. He was released in April 2015, and in October 2015, he was pulled over in Key West by a Monroe County Sheriff’s Deputy for a traffic violation and shot the deputy, who survived only because he was wearing a vest. Thomas was sentenced to life in prison on that charge and other associated charges and has been incarcerated since June 2018. In October 2025, he was sentenced to a third life sentence for a homicide charge out of Miami-Dade County.