Infant shot dead in robbery
De’Marquis Elkins, 17, 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.
Sherry West wept as she said a teenager trying to rob her at gunpoint asked: “Do you want me to kill your baby?” before he fatally shot her son in the head on Thursday morning while she walked near their home in coastal Brunswick.
“He asked me for money and I said I didn’t have it,” she said. “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!’ ”
West said the teenager fired four shots, the first into the ground. Ms West did not see a shell casing ejected, and said she assumed the gun wasn’t real.
Then the teenager fired at her head and the bullet grazed her left ear — she has a small scab and bruising there. He fired again and shot her in the left leg above the knee. “I didn’t know I was hurt,” she said.
“The boy proceeded to go around to the stroller and he shot my baby in the face. And then he just shoved me when I started screaming and he ran down London St with the little boy.”
Several people in the neighbourhood called 911 after they heard gunshots, but police believed West was the only witness.
West lives in a rented house in the city’s Old Town historic district. Beverly Anderson’s husband owns the property and she said West has lived there for six or seven years.
“We’re just very sorry about what happened and very aghast that something could happen in our little neighbourhood,” said Anderson.
She said people walk up and down the street, children walk to school, and families are frequently outdoors. “It’s scared everybody,” she said.
She said West stayed home to care for her baby.
“The house has a front porch with a swing and we’d see him out on the swing with his mother,” said Anderson. “He was a happy, cheerful baby.”
It is not West’s first loss of a child to violence. She said her 18-year-old son, Shaun Glassey, was killed in New Jersey in Mar 2008.
