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A Florida teen was charged this week with the murder of a 60-year-old grandmother who was a Desert Storm veteran.
Angela Sutton Washington was shot to death on February 7 near a shopping mall in Orlando, Florida.
The alleged shooter, who is 15 years old, was charged with first-degree murder with a weapon on Friday — four months after the investigation into her murder began, Orlando police said.
“Due to the unremitting efforts of our homicide detectives and the cooperation of the community and Central Florida Crimeline, a suspect has been apprehended,” the department said in a statement posted to Facebook.
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The 15-year-old was charged with first-degree murder with a weapon four months after Angela Sutton Washington was killed in Orlando, Fla. (Orlando Police Department)
“It’s hard to understand. I can’t sit here and say I’m not mad,” Angela Sutton Washington’s son, Fernando Washington, told FOX 35 in March. “I can’t say I’m not confused but in the climate we live in, that’s not surprising.”
He said he hoped his mother’s murder would be a “catalyst for change” in his community.
“We can’t keep thinking that pointless deaths have meaning, because they don’t,” he said.
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Washington was murdered down the street from her home, according to FOX 35. Her family said she went shopping downtown where she was killed almost every day.
“This was a senseless murder of a valued member of our community,” Orlando Police Department Detective Barb Sharp said in March, according to the Orlando Sentinel. “Angela was a military veteran, Desert Storm. She is a beloved daughter, mother and grandmother. She just stopped at the convenience store on her way home to pick something up and was shot and killed.”
Police previously said Washington was not the intended target of the shooting, FOX 35 reported. Several men were hanging around the convenience store when she was shot, The Sentinel reported.
Community member Bishop Kelvin Cobaris said it is “heartbreaking” to see a teenager arrested for the crime.
“There are young people in our communities who are making bad decisions, and they are costing them their lives, because even though the suspect is not dead, their lives are basically over after being accused of this,” he told FOX 35.
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He added: “To be a woman who served our country, who sacrificed and gave her life for our freedom, and to make sure she performed that service and her life would be cut short by senseless street violence because she had nothing wrong done.”
