A federal judge sentenced a 26-year-old North Carolina man to three life sentences plus an additional 83 years in prison in connection with the murders of an active-duty Fort Bragg soldier and U.S. Army veteran, according to prosecutors.
In May, Kenneth Maurice Quick Jr., was convicted of eight counts in relation to the December 2020 killings of Master Sgt. William Lavigne III, a member of the Army’s elite Delta Force unit, and former soldier Timothy Dumas Sr., Stars and Stripes reported. Quick was found guilty of charges including first-degree murder, drug conspiracy and obstruction of justice.
Quick is accused of dumping the men’s bodies on Fort Bragg after shooting them to death. LaVigne, 37, and Dumas, 44, were found dead off a road located on Fort Bragg, the Fayetteville Observer reported. (Fort Bragg is an Army base located near Fayetteville.)
Prior to their deaths, according to prosecutors, Quick was planning to buy cocaine from LaVigne. Dumas, who was accused of giving the cocaine to LaVigne, accompanied LaVigne to supply Quick with the drugs, according to prosecutors.
Quick and LaVigne met “at a trap house,” where prosecutors said Quick “remorselessly shot” LaVigne “in the back five times.”
Then Quick made Dumas drive to a “remote wooded area” on the Army base to help him get rid of Lavigne’s body, according to prosecutors.
Quick fatally shot Dumas in the head and in his back as the truck Dumas had been driving got stuck in sand, prosecutors said.
A day later, Quick and alleged coconspirators drove the truck to a different county and set it ablaze, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
Quick is accused of killing a third person about two months later during a drug deal, prosecutors said.
“This cold‑blooded murderer will never see the light of day again,” U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle, of the Eastern District of North Carolina, said in a Wednesday, August 27 news release. “Understand this, if you commit depraved violence on federal property: we will hunt you down, we will prosecute you, and we will lock you away for a very long time. No excuses. No escape. When you take lives, we will come for you without hesitation. You get life for taking a life.”
Quick’s defense attorney didn’t immediately return a request for comment from Us.
The murders of LaVigne and Dumas are discussed in a book titled The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces, according to Stars and Stripes.
“Quick likely believed he evaded authorities in killing two men and discarding their bodies on Fort Bragg property,” Reid Davis, the FBI Special Agent in Charge in North Carolina, said in a statement. “He clearly didn’t consider the dedication and expertise of FBI Special Agents and the United States Army Criminal Investigation Division, who followed the evidence and put together a meticulous timeline of Quick’s crimes.”
