An Orlando teenager was arrested and charged on Friday for the murder of his grandmother, US Army Sgt. Angela Sutton Washington, who served in Operation Desert Storm. The authorities will not release the name of the alleged fifteen-year-old shooter because he is a minor. The teenager was charged with first-degree murder with a firearm.
The teen is the second suspect to be arrested for the crime. Police identified the first suspect, arrested on Tuesday, as 19-year-old Keyonce Pitts. Pitts was also charged with first-degree murder with a firearm.
In a statement about the arrest, the Orlando Police said the grandmother, 61, was hit and killed by a stray bullet on February 7. She had been visiting the North Lane Plaza strip mall, located in Orlando, at the time of the shooting. The investigation had been ongoing since February, culminating in the June 9 arrest of the second suspect, charged with the murder of his own grandmother.
“Through the relentless efforts of our Homicide Detectives along with cooperation from the community and Central Florida Crimeline, a suspect has been captured,” police said.
The police said that the victim “was simply stopping at the convenience store on the way home to pick something up and was shot and killed.”
Video surveillance at the scene revealed numerous young men and teenagers arguing with one another at the North Lane Plaza strip mall. At one point during the heated discussion, someone took out a gun and fired the fatal shot that hit Ms. Washington, who was an innocent bystander.
Evidence included the appearance of a dark Mazda 3 speeding away from the mall parking lot right after the shooting.
After the shooting death, the family of the victim told local TV news Fox 35 that Ms. Washington went to the mall almost daily. The victim’s son, Fernando Washington, said he was shocked at the violent death of his mother.
“We cannot continue to think that senseless deaths make sense, because they don’t,” he said.
When word spread that the shooter was a local teenager, community leader Bishop Kelvin Cobaris said that it was “heartbreaking” and that Ms. Washington was sacrificed by “senseless violence.”
“There are young people in our communities that are making bad decisions, and these costing them their life because while the suspect is not dead, basically after being charged with this, their life is about over,” noted Bishop Cobaris. After the shooting death, Orlando Police offered a reward of $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of a suspect.
Although the name of the minor who shot and killed his grandmother cannot be made public because he is a minor, his possible prison term, if found guilty, is equal to an adult’s.
The teen, charged with first-degree murder, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole if convicted.
The United States is the only country in the world that may sentence minors under eighteen to life in prison without parole, depending upon the severity of the crime.
The Supreme Court in Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), acknowledged the validity of adolescent brain science and then banned the usage of capital punishment for minors under eighteen. The High Court also limited life without parole sentences for minors to only include homicides. At the time, the Supreme Court applied the decision retroactively.
Five years later, in 2010 in Graham v. Florida, 130 S.CT. 2011 (2010), the Supreme Court called life without parole “an especially harsh punishment for a juvenile … A 16-year-old and a 75-year-old each sentenced to life without parole receive the same punishment in name only.”
Another decision by the high court, in Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs, 132 S.Ct. 2455 (2012), ruled that for minors 18, mandatory life without parole sentences violate the Eighth Amendment.
