Raleigh, N.C. — Wake County prosecutors will seek the death penalty against a Raleigh man accused in the stabbing death of his girlfriend.

Mwanza Rama Bennett, 25, faces a first-degree murder charge in the death of Lorrielle Watkins, 25. She was found dead outside the Trees & Leaves apartment complex on Kent Road on May 1.

Bennett was arrested a short time later after he fled the scene and wrecked the vehicle he was driving.

Watkins was a nursing student with one semester left of school and the single mother of an 11-year-old autistic son who was inside the apartment when she was killed, family members said.