Prosecutors filed their intent to seek the death penalty against 21-year-old delivery man Jorge Luis Dupre Lachazo in the death of 75-year-old Evelyn Smith Udell of Boca Raton.

WEST PALM BEACH - A 21-year-old deliveryman accused of fatally beating a 75-year-old woman after installing new appliances in her Boca Raton home this summer will face the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder, newly filed court documents show.

Prosecutors filed their notice of intent to seek the death penalty in the trial of Jorge Luis Dupre Lachazo on Monday, according to Palm Beach County court records. Dupre Lachazo is accused of beating 75-year-old Evelyn Smith Udell with a wooden mallet, then dousing her in a chemical that caught fire, burning nearly her whole body.

Udell was married for 55 years, a mother of two, a grandmother of six and a retired college library worker, family and friends said.

No trial date has been set in the case.

"The capital felony was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel," Assistant State Attorney Reid Scott wrote in the court document.

On Aug. 19, Dupre Lachazo told investigators he attacked Udell after he and another delivery-company worker moved a new washer and dryer into her home off of Jog and Yamato roads just south of Spanish River High School. Dupre Lachazo was a contractor to the company that Best Buy contracts with to deliver goods, records show.

The other delivery man told police he stepped outside to make a cellphone call while Dupre Lachazo was supposed to be showing the woman how to use the new appliances.

Dupre Lachazo said that’s when he attacked the woman.

The other deliveryman said he heard screams, went back inside the home and saw the woman on the floor. Again, he went outside, but this time he called police, investigators said

When authorities arrived at the home, they found her unconscious in the laundry room, with her clothes on fire. Dupre Lachazo told detectives he wasn’t sure what caused her clothes to catch fire, but first responders found the dryer running and that all the burners on the stove, as well as the oven, were on.

Now that prosecutors are seeking death penalty, Dupre Lachazo’s first-degree murder case joins the ranks of other capital punishment cases across the county such as Dacoby Wooten, Shelia Keen-Warren, Alejandro Aleman, Kristen Meyer, Marcus Steward and Marlin Joseph.

Wooten is on trial this week for allegedly shooting and killing the mother of his children and trying to kill her mother in Belle Glade in 2015.

Keen-Warren is accused of dressing up as a clown and killing her then-lover’s wife at her Wellington home in 1990. Her death penalty trial is slated to begin Jan. 31.

Aleman and Meyer are accused of starving their 13-month old daughter, Tayla Aleman, to death in 2016. Though no trial date has been set for Aleman, Meyer is expected to begin her death penalty trial in March.

Steward is accused of being involved in the 2017 Super Bowl Sunday triple murder of Sean Henry, Brandi El-Salhy and Kelli Doherty. Though there is no trial date set in his case, his co-defendant, Christopher Vasata, was found guilty of first-degree murder this summer. The jury declined to sentence him to death.

Joseph is accused of fatally shooting Kaladaa Crowell and her 11-year-old daughter, Kyra Inglett, in West Palm Beach in 2017. After several months in mental-health court, Joseph was found competent and is expected to go to trial in February.

hwinston@pbpost.com

@hannahwinston