Ga. man faces trial in killing of baby in stroller

Yahoo News ^ | August 17, 2013 | RUSS BYNUM

[Uncle Chip]

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — It was a tiny bullet that took the short life of Antonio Santiago.

He had learned to walk, but not yet talk, when he was killed March 21, six weeks after his first birthday. He was strapped in his stroller, out for a walk with his mother a few blocks from their apartment near the Georgia coast, when someone shot the boy between the eyes with a .22-caliber bullet the size of a garden pea.

The teenager charged as the shooter is scheduled to stand trial next week in a courthouse far from the scene of the crime. Because of public outrage and news coverage, a judge has moved 18-year-old De'Marquise Elkins' trial 325 miles away, to the suburbs outside Atlanta.

Jury selection starts Monday at the Cobb County courthouse in Marietta. Superior Court Judge Stephen Kelley has set aside two weeks for the trial.

Elkins faces life in prison if convicted of murder. His youth spared him a possible death sentence. At the time of the shooting he was 17, too young to face capital charges in Georgia.

Police say the motive was as banal as the slaying of a toddler was shocking. Investigators concluded that Antonio was killed during an attempted street robbery as his mother, Sherry West, was strolling home with the child from the post office. West said a gunman demanding cash shot her baby in the face after she told him she had no money.....

"He kept asking, and I just said 'I don't have it,'" West told The Associated Press the day after the slaying. "And he said, 'Do you want me to kill your baby?' And I said, 'No, don't kill my baby!'".........

[Popman]

To make things worse, his defense says that the child was shot by his own mother — for insurance money.

Is that for real ?

Unless there is any actual evidence of that, I would think a jury would find that most disgusting and not help his defense at all...

[Publius]

This incident happened only 15 miles from the little coastal fishing village where I retired. Local media covered the story as far as Savannah. I found that my friends in Los Angeles and Seattle had no knowledge of this incident because the national media avoided it. There was a reason for this, but it wasn't all that stuff in Florida.

What the media fear is something that will set back race relations to the way things were before the Sixties, especially in the South.

Had this incident occurred as recently as the 1920's, the fathers of Brunswick would have donned their sheets and pointy hats, marched by torchlight to the police station, taken the suspects to a bridge or live oak, and lynched them. The bodies would have been burned.

Then the fathers would have taken those torches to the Brunswick ghetto and burned it to the ground, an action reminiscent of Tulsa (1921) and Rosewood FL (1923).

It is precisely this that the media wishes to avoid. They call it "being a responsible steward of the press and public airwaves." Bottom line: They fear what would happen to race relations if white folks got really riled up. There is an ancestral memory of Jim Crow in the South, and people here are wary of it.

[null and void]

If convicted, his head should be removed.

Nahhh. Too muslim.

Strap him into a baby stroller scaled up to his size.

Have his mother watch and plead for his life.

Shoot him in the exact same place little baby Antonio was shot, with a caliber scaled up to his size.

Preferably on the very same sidewalk little baby Antonio lost his life.

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

They’re black because if they were white you can be damn sure they would print that.

[Tennessee Nana]

Good thing that sharia law is not banned in OK after all..

Those “yutes” can get “proper” justice..

[Jeff Chandler]

[BenLurkin]

It’s in the article.

[Lazamataz]

Not enough bad stuff can happen to this subhuman demon.

[Calvin Locke]

I subscribe to the Library of Congress RSS. A while back, as part of the "Chronicling America" feed, they posted an image of a newspaper article about the McKinley Assassination.

The LOC link's down until 8/19, but iirc, McKinley was shot around September 7, died a week later, and his assassin was tried, convicted, and executed just before the end of October of that same year.

[Popman]

It’s in the article.

Wait, you expect me to read the article : O )

FReeper SOP is to comment on the fly...:)

[Popman]

McKinley was shot around September 7, died a week later, and his assassin was tried, convicted, and executed just before the end of October of that same year.

Nowadays he would be alive until he died of old age in prison, though McVeigh did meet his maker pretty quick....it does make me wonder why...(getting out the tin foil)

[cherry]

come on Opprha....defend you little feral black murderer of babies...come on now...

[cherry]

one has to have prejudice in his life, to survive....he has to discriminate what is good, what is dangerous....

[Gay State Conservative]

My aunt and uncle are buried on St Simon Island...not far from Brunswick.*Beautiful* country around there.

[CGASMIA68]

tilll ya get off the beaten path

[ScottinVA]

I SO want him dead, I would happily volunteer to operate the guillotine.

[BenLurkin]

“meretricious” — excellent choice of words!

[kabumpo]

Gorgeous. Stayed at the King & Prince Hotel, years ago.

[BenLurkin]

I’m no exception....8^)

[bigheadfred]

so the perp approaches and says he will shoot the kid but she gets the gun from him and screams hes mine and shoots the baby herself i like it i smell blockbuster