Decatur, Ala. | Wednesday, May 22, 2013
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Mother mourns baby shot in face; 2 teens arrested
Associated Press/Brunswick News/Bobby Haven
Sherry West breaks down in tears Friday as she describes the incident the day before where her 13-month-old son was fatally shot and she was wounded.

BRUNSWICK, Ga. — In five years, Sherry West has lost two sons to unspeakable violence.

The Georgia mother was grieving from Thursday's shooting death of her 13-month-old son in his stroller during an attempted robbery while they took a morning stroll. In 2008, her 18-year-old son was stabbed in an altercation in New Jersey.

A pair of teenagers was arrested Friday in the most recent shooting. West had just been to the post office a few blocks from her apartment Thursday morning and was pushing her son, Antonio, in his stroller while they walked past gnarled oak trees and blooming azaleas in the coastal city of Brunswick.

West said a tall, skinny teenager, accompanied by a smaller boy, asked her for money.

"He asked me for money and I said I didn't have it," she told The Associated Press on Friday from her apartment, which was scattered with her son's toys and movies.

"When you have a baby, you spend all your money on babies. They're expensive. And he kept asking and I just said 'I don't have it.' And he said, 'Do you want me to kill your baby?' And I said, 'No, don't kill my baby!' "

One of the teens fired four shots, grazing West's ear and striking her in the leg, before he walked around to the stroller and shot the baby in the face.

Seventeen-year-old De'Marquis Elkins is charged as an adult with first-degree murder, along with a 14-year-old who was not identified because he is a juvenile, Police Chief Tobe Green said. It wasn't immediately clear whether the boys had attorneys.

Police announced the arrest Friday afternoon after combing school records and canvassing neighborhoods searching for the pair. The chief said the motive of the "horrendous act" was still under investigation and the weapon had not been found.

"I feel glad that justice will be served," West said. "It's not something I'm going to live with very well. I'm just glad they caught him."

West said detectives showed her mugshots of about 24 young men. She pointed to one, saying he looked like the gunman.

"After I picked him, they said they had him in custody," West said. "It looked just like him. So I think we got our man."

West said she thought the other suspect looked much younger: "That little boy did not look 14."

The slaying happened around the corner from West's apartment in the city's Old Town historic district. It's a street lined with grand Victorian homes from the late 1800s. Most have been neatly restored by their owners. Others, with faded and flaking paint, have been divided into rental units like the apartment West shared with her son. The slain boy's father, Luis Santiago, lives in a house across the street.

A neighbor dropped off a fruit basket and then a hot pot of coffee Friday as a friend from the post office dropped by to comfort West.

Santiago came and went. At one point he scooped up an armload of his son's stuffed animals, saying he wanted to take them home with him. He talked about Antonio's first birthday on Feb. 5 and how they had tried different party hats on the boy.

"He's all right," Santiago told the boy's mother, trying to smile. "He's potty training upstairs in heaven."

West said her son was walking well on his own and eight of his teeth had come in. But she also mourned the milestones that will never come, like Antonio's first day at school.

"I'm always going to wonder what his first word would be," West said.

Beverly Anderson, whose husband owns the property where West has lived for several years, said she was stunned by the violence in what's generally known as a safe neighborhood where children walk to school and families are frequently outdoors.

Jonathan Mayes and his wife were out walking their dogs Friday, right past the crime scene, and said they've never felt nervous about being out after dark.

"What is so mind-numbing about this is we don't have this kind of stuff happen here," Mayes said.

It's not the mother's first loss of a child to violence. West said her 18-year-old son, Shaun Glassey, was killed in New Jersey in 2008. She still has a newspaper clipping from the time.

Glassey was killed with a steak knife in March 2008 during an attack involving several other teens on a dark street corner in Gloucester County, N.J., according to news reports from the time.

"He and some other boys were going to ambush a kid," Bernie Weisenfeld, a spokesman for the Gloucester County prosecutor's office, told the AP Friday.

Glassey was armed with a knife, but the 17-year-old target of the attack was able to get the knife away from him "and Glassey ended up on the wrong end of the knife," Weisenfeld recalled.

Prosecutors decided the 17-year-old would not be charged because they determined that he acted in self-defense.

Sabrina Elkins, the sister of the older suspect in the Georgia baby's slaying, said Friday evening that she believed her brother was innocent of the charges. She didn't know whether he had a lawyer.

"He couldn't have done that to a little baby," she told AP. "My brother has a good heart."

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11 comments on this item

I'm sorry but I don't care if the other kid IS 14 years old! He committed an adult crime, therefore he should be treated like an adult! If the 17 year old wanted money, he could flip burgers or stocked shelves or something like that to make money. These "kids" should be punished to the fullest extent of Georgia law as adults!

We know the "law" is limited to issue punishment and it will be a long time coming. I hope news of this will spread in the jail/prison where the shooter will be kept. Perhaps he will meet with a fate that a trial will not be needed. This is one of the most aweful crimes in my memory.

You can't walk down the street anymore. I'm telling you all, you better arm yourself.

Yeah Bill, we should all get more guns. Then things like this wouldn't happen anymore right?

Kenneth, it would narrow it down. When the victims start firing back then the criminals will be hesitant to take advantage of the "weak". Had my house broke into THREE times over a 6 month period while I was home. Hasn't been robbed for over 10 years now since I fired a warning shot the third time and finally time. Could have killed one of the burglars but I'm not a violent man. But those %^@*&s I'm sure passed the word around that I have a loaded burglar alarm. Hell, I carry my gun even when I go walking now.

Good point Chris.

It's too bad the mother of this child did not have a 1911 .45 caliber pistol loaded with 230 grain JHP's and had blown the gray matter of these two thugs brains on the side walk where they stood.

And Kenneth, do you really think these thugs got their guns legally? Do you think anything Obama and Joe Bidden have proposed in the way of new gun laws would have stopped this crime from happening?

Kenneth are you new?

Yeah Ken, If this lady had a handgun in her purse , and knew how to use it , when the thug asked for her money she could have reached in her purse saying "sure " and then gave him some lead poisoning. Grow a set Kenneth .

Where are WIlliam and Otis?

May God bless this little boy & keep him at his side, may he grant the mother healing, and may he forgive the murderer and may he give us the curage to save the next "little boy & mother" by giving this low life the death penalty.

Both of these boys should get the death penalty. If youthful offender status comes into play at all there is something very very wrong with our judicial system.

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