Jurors have resumed deliberating in the trial of a wealthy stock trader charged with murder in the fire death of a man who was helping him dig tunnels for a nuclear bunker beneath a Maryland home.
The 12 jurors deliberated for more than two hours Tuesday after hearing attorneys’ closing arguments in the case against 27-year-old Daniel Beckwitt. He’s charged with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter in the September 2017 death of 21-year-old Askia Khafra.
Defense attorney Robert Bonsib told jurors Khafra’s death was an accident, not a crime.
Montgomery County prosecutor Marybeth Ayres said Beckwitt sacrificed safety for secrecy and created the “death trap” conditions that prevented Khafra from escaping the trash-filled house in Bethesda, a Washington suburb.
