A 34-year-old man who shot at police when he was being apprehended will spend the rest of his life in prison for the 2021 murder of his girlfriend, who he stabbed over six dozen times.
On Thursday, May 26, Brandon McLean was found guilty of the first degree murder of his girlfriend, Amy Humphries, in April 2021. After a three-day jury trial, McLean was sentenced to life in prison for the crime.
The sentence closes a case that spanned multiple years and included multiple statements from McLean, who accused his appointed public defender, the judge, and the court system of violating his rights.
The case was opened on April 20, 2021, when Humphries’ body was discovered on a pedestrian trail in Osteen. According to court records, McLean beat, strangled, and stabbed Humphries’ 77 times with a box cutter just a couple hours after she refused to buy him a firearm.
After he killed Humphries, McLean transported her body using a new car that Humphries had recently purchased. Cell phone records obtained by police show McLean and the victim’s phones traveled together to the trail where her body was found before leaving the scene.
The following day, April 21, 2021, Seminole County Sheriff’s Office deputies tracked Humphries’ car to a laundromat in Sanford. When deputies approached McLean, he ran away from the vehicle, pulled out a handgun, and began firing at authorities.
Deputies chased McLean and returned fire, wounding him in the process. Once they were able to detain McLean, they found that he was in possession of Humphries’ driver’s license, bank cards, and car keys, as well as a box cutter covered in blood.
That blood was tested and produced a positive match to that of Humphries’.
When the vehicle was searched, investigators found that a seat cover had been placed over the passenger’s seat to conceal blood stains. Those stains were tested and also produced a positive match to Humphries’ DNA.
Despite the overwhelming evidence tying him to his girlfriend’s murder, McLean petitioned the court and submitted motions multiple times over the past two years. He asked that the case be dismissed on the grounds that his attorney was “incompetent,” and that the judge in the case had bias because the victim was a “white woman.”