Posted on 11/05/2007 8:33:39 AM PST by nin_kasi
NEW YORK -- Family and friends gathered Sunday at a funeral home in the Bronx to remember Eric Rosado, the 14-year-old shot and killed while robbing a South Miami-Dade grocery store last week.
Many wondered why the teen, who moved to South Florida in 2005 and returned home to be buried, had suddenly gone astray.
Rosado, a freshman at Cooper City High School, died when a store manager who was being robbed pulled out a gun and shot him.
Police said the teenager's two accomplices in the attempted holdup of the Diaz Grocery Store in Naranja on Tuesday -- and in other mom-and-pop grocery robberies since October -- were his 32-year-old girlfriend, Ivona Sanchez, who is the mother of one of his friends, and Sanchez's sister, Bonie Saldarriaga, 30.
The two women have been charged with second-degree felony murder for the death of their young accomplice, killed in the commission of a crime.
In the Bronx, where Rosado was born and raised and had scores of relatives, shock spread through his funeral.
''We were amazed,'' said Rosado's older sister, Jackie Alvarado, upon hearing the news that her brother had been killed. ``It was not the person that we knew.''
Those who knew Rosado before he moved to Florida described him as a serious student.
''He was always trying to protect people, not hurt them,'' said Jennifer Avallone, his fifth-grade teacher at PS 280. ``All the teachers loved him.''
The small room at the funeral home on 192nd Street filled up with people as afternoon turned to evening. A wreath of pink and white flowers covered the open casket where Rosado's body lay.
The boy's mother sat in the front row during the wake. At one point her sobbing filled the room. ''My God, my God,'' she cried out in Spanish. ``Why?''
Two years ago, Candida Alvarado moved with her son to Florida. Family described Alvarado as a hard-working single mother who stayed involved in her son's life. The move was an attempt to take Rosado away from the tough Bronx streets.
''She wanted to isolate him from the environment here,'' said Rosado's cousin, Juan Cordero, who was one of the last to speak to Rosado before his death.
But the move brought new challenges. Soon, he met Sanchez -- and his life changed.
Rosado's family said his behavior changed. ''My little cousin was stressed. He wasn't the same,'' said Cordero, 22. He said Rosado seemed preoccupied all the time. ``It's like he wasn't there.''
Yet even while Rosado grew increasingly distant from his family, those still close to him said he continued to remember important events.
He made it a point to attend the baby shower for Cordero's first child last May.
He called his sister Jackie when she gave birth to a baby boy in August.
And when another sister, Wanda, got a new job as an administrator of a general pharmaceutical company, he phoned to say congratulations.
''He was just family based,'' said his sister, Wanda, 26.
Yep, that’s the law in Canada too. If you point a toy gun at somebody you will be charged with “pointing a firearm”. Under the Criminal Code, anything you present as a firearm is legally a firearm- even if it’s your finger in your pocket.
Certainly a 32-year-old woman can exert tremendous influence on a 15-year-old boy. The words "lead around by his nose" come to mind.
Somehow I doubt that is was his nose by which she was leading him ;-)
My thought too...especially since the 32 year old girlfriend was the mother of his friend...how easy would it be to tell mom that you are going over to your friend's house? She would likely assume it was to visit his friend-not the friend's mother!
She was.
"The two women have been charged with second-degree felony murder for the death of their young accomplice, killed in the commission of a crime."
“The two women have been charged with second-degree felony murder for the death of their young accomplice, killed in the commission of a crime.”
I guess he found out the hard way that, unlike NYC, Miami shopkeepers shoot back.
right there in black and white ...
Sorry, this is Miami-Dade, right up from Homestead, about the farthest S you can get in Miami-Dade. As much as I’d like to blame this on Broward, geography (and living here) makes it impossible.
Wow, right there and I missed it.
Of course, that’s what I have *you* for... :D
Next time, glasses. I’m having that “over-forty” feeling.
(From the liberal bed-wetting anti-freedom POV)
“Another po’ innocent chile’, cut down by senseless gun violence...”
Thanbks, glad to hear that.
I saw Cooper City and immediately thought of the one west of Hollywood, which I always thought was a nice place. :-)
Damn. Just when he was “turning his life around.” Also, he would have “given you the shirt off his back.”
Rosado ... died when a store manager who was being robbed pulled out a gun and shot him.
Yeah. Just makes it sound like Rosado was just kinda standing there in the store minding his own business, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
HELLOOOOOO! Rosado (& pals) was the one doing the robbing!!! Author had to go out of his way to obfuscate this point.
Again I say, lack of a positive male role model in how to achive and what is good. Where's Papa?
Eric was indeed 14 years old. He would have been 15 next month. If he truly was the model citizen when he was in NY, then someone really dropped the ball on this kid when he moved here. He was a very troubled young man, and was in constant trouble in school for the couple of years he was in Broward schools.
You read it correctly; he lived in Cooper City (which is a very nice place). He did his criminal activity in South Dade.
“...then we’re all “shocked”.
Get it right, It has to be worded “Shocked! Shocked I tell ya!” LOL!
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