A Florida jury convicted a man who shot his ex-girlfriend to death as she sat in the drive-thru bank teller line, according to prosecutors.
William Tollard, 50, was found guilty on Thursday of first-degree murder in the Oct. 5, 2020, slaying of Angela Ziegler in Venice, said State Attorney Ed Brodsky of the 12th Judicial Circuit in a news release.
Ziegler was in the line at the BB & bank when Tollard pulled up behind her, blocking her Jeep between his truck and a work van at the teller window. Tollard then stepped out of his vehicle and walked up to Ziegler’s driver’s side window. Surveillance video showed after a brief conversation, he fired three shots at Ziegler. Then he walked around the passenger side and fired two more shots, prosecutors said.
Ziegler’s Jeep drifted forward for about 100 yards before it crashed into a light pole. Tollard drove to the victim’s vehicle and fired several more times into her front windshield. As he was shooting, he allegedly said, “Who the [expletive] do you think you are? You can’t [expletive] do this to me.” Ziegler died there. She suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the chest, arms and neck.
Tollard calmly walked back to his truck and drove away, authorities said. He later called 911 to say he “just shot somebody,” a probable cause arrest affidavit said. Sarasota County Sheriff’s deputies met him at his location and took him into custody. Deputies found a semi-automatic firearm, a magazine containing eight rounds and a pair of binoculars on the front passenger seat of his truck. Detectives learned that Tollard and the victim had a “tumultuous on-again, off-again relationship” over a year-and-a-half. The victim broke up with him about five days earlier, prosecutors said.
William Tollard, 50, was found guilty in the shooting death of his ex-girlfriend Angela Ziegler, who sat in the drive-thru bank teller line in Venice, Florida. (Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office)
The lead prosecutor in the case, Assistant State Attorney Karen Fraivillig, commended the lead detectives.
“After downloading the defendant’s phone records, detectives uncovered overwhelming evidence of Tollard’s guilt, including dozens of manipulative text messages to the victim, her estranged husband, and other members of her family,” Fraivillig said in a statement. “The evidence established Tollard’s determination to seek revenge for being spurned by the victim. This is a case of a man who would not take no for an answer … a classic and ultimately tragic replaying of ‘If I can’t have her, no one can.””
Tollard faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.
Tollard is also being sued in a wrongful-death lawsuit by the victim’s husband.
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