- March 11, 2025
A jury found William Copeland, a Palm Coast man accused of shooting his ex-girlfriend’s father, guilty as charged Saturday after a four-day trial.
As Copeland stood and faced the jury to hear the verdict that could bring him a life sentence, he stood straight, betraying emotion not in his face, but instead in his wringing hands.
The jury found Copeland guilty of attempted first-degree murder with a firearm, a life felony; aggravated battery with a firearm and causing great bodily harm, a first-degree felony; and shooting into a building, a second-degree felony.
Prosecution said Copeland went to the Palm Coast home of his ex-girlfriend, Corina Venezia, late the day of May 18, 2011, rang the doorbell, and ran to the rear of the building.
Earlier that day, Copeland and Corina Venezia had argued about the amount of financial support Copeland should supply for the couple’s daughter, who is now 2 years old.
Both Corina Venezia and her father, Accursio Venezia, awoke and went downstairs to answer the door, but found nobody there. Accursio Venezia said he wanted to secure his home before returning to bed, so he went to retrieve a pellet gun he kept in his kitchen, at the rear of the house.
Copeland fired three shots through the kitchen’s sliding glass door. One of them hit Accursio Venezia, passing through his left lung. He was eventually flown to Halifax Hospital for an emergency surgery that saved his life.
After the verdict was read, the Venezias left the courtroom hugging each other and crying. Shortly after, Copeland’s friends and family followed, shedding tears of a different tone. Copeland is 21.
He will be sentenced 3 p.m. Dec. 11.
Copeland’s defense attorney, Lynn Martin, said there was no firm proof that Copeland had been the shooter at the Venezia residence.
She accused investigators of wearing “blinders” as they worked.
“There were plenty of other viable suspects who they could have and should have looked at, but didn’t,” Martin said.
When sheriff’s deputies responded to the Venezia home shortly after Accursio Venezia was shot, his daughter immediately identified Copeland as a suspect. During a recent argument, Corina Venezia said Copeland had threatened her.
“You don’t know me or what I’m capable of,” she said Copeland told her. Her father later reported the call to law enforcement.
Martin said Anthony Wiggins was one potential suspect who wasn’t investigated. During an interview shortly after his arrest, Copeland said he believed Wiggins had shot Accursio Venezia. The weapon used in the shooting was found in Wiggins’ home.
But the night of the shooting, Copeland had gotten a ride to the Venezia residence from some friends. Those friends, who were unaware of Copeland’s actions, also picked him up from the same location shortly after the shooting.
They testified that he was “out of breath” when he left the scene, and said Copeland asked that they stop at McDonald’s on their way home so he could give someone money he owed.
One of those friends, Shaun Fuller, said Copeland gave a person in a truck like the one Wiggins drives a black bag in the parking lot of the fast food restaurant. The gun used in the crime was later found in a similar bag in Wiggins’ home.
Martin said investigators conducted sloppy crime scene analysis and didn’t follow up on all of their leads. She criticized the use of gunshot residue found on Copeland’s shirt as evidence, calling expert witnesses who said that the presence of gunshot residue — especially on clothing rather than on hands — doesn’t prove that a person shot or even contacted a firearm. No residue was found on Copeland’s hands.
Investigators, she said, let evidence take them where they wanted: straight to Copeland.
But since Copeland placed himself at the scene of the crime, law enforcement said, much of what Martin suggested was negligence — such as not using cell phone records to place Copeland the night of the crime. That was irrelevant and would have been a waste of resources, law enforcement said.
“To believe any of this,” Johnson told the jury, “you’d have to believe there was a mass conspiracy going on to frame William Copeland.”
The jury deliberated for 1.5 hours before finding Copeland guilty.
