A 49-year-old New York man was sentenced to life in prison without parole for luring a Bennington man to a power substation in 2022 and shooting him dead. Elliott Russell's sentencing, which wrapped up late in the afternoon, closes out a case that began with a 911 call from a dying victim and ended with a jury's first-degree murder conviction months earlier this year.
A Shooting Rooted in 'Personal Problems About a Woman'
According to WCAX, police said Russell lured victim Ulysses Ivey to a Green Mountain Power substation in Bennington in 2022 and shot him over personal problems about a woman. Ivey managed to call 911 moments after he was shot and identified Russell as the shooter before he later died, the station reported.
Russell was convicted of first-degree murder in May 2026, per the same WCAX account. A separate report from WCAX's trial coverage had pinned the killing to October 26, 2022, the date Ivey was shot and died.
From Conviction to Sentencing
The guilty verdict came down on a Monday in May, as the Bennington Banner reported at the time, with sentencing initially scheduled for August 27 at 1 p.m. WCAX's more recent reporting confirms the outcome: Russell was given a life sentence without parole, with the hearing concluding late in the afternoon.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2022 shooting, little was publicly known about why Ivey was killed or how well he knew his attacker. An early report from VTDigger noted that investigators had not indicated the relationship between the men, or a motive for the killing, at that stage. That same report noted the case marked the town's second homicide of the year, and that both of Bennington's homicide cases that year involved firearms.
A Related Plea in the Same Case
Russell was not the only person charged in connection with Ivey's death. The Bennington Banner's earlier coverage of the trial noted that Erin Wilson pleaded no contest to an amended charge of manslaughter and guilty to a felony charge of being an accessory to murder after the fact. Wilson received a sentence of 3 to 12 years behind bars on the manslaughter count, plus a consecutive 2-to-5-year sentence on the accessory charge, according to that reporting.
The Banner also noted, in coverage from mid-2023, that the last known first-degree premeditated murder charge filed in Bennington County before Russell's case belonged to Darren Pronto, underscoring how rare charges of that severity are in the county.
