Two boys – one just 12 years old – were arrested Thursday night and charged with first-degree murder in connection with the shooting deaths of three Florida teenagers whose bodies were found last weekend. Another teenager wanted in connection to the crime is still on the loose.
Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods made the announcement on Friday, WFTV reported, saying that the sheriff’s office worked with other law enforcement agencies to find the teens suspected of killing three other teenagers over the weekend. A 17-year-old and a 12-year-old were arrested Thursday night. A third, aged 16, is still on the loose.
“Some of you know him, know where he is and you need to turn him in,” Woods said Friday. “I will get him, I will find him and justice will be complete.”
Woods said Friday that the shootings don’t look like a gang conflict of some kind, but that the suspects and the victims were all associated with gangs, according to WFTV.
“Each and every one of them was in some shape or form was associated with a gang,” Woods said.
The suspects were previously known to have committed burglaries and robberies in the area, which is how they reportedly got the guns used in the shootings, the sheriff said.
Last Thursday, sheriff’s deputies found 16-year-old Layla Silvernail lying in a dumpster around 11 p.m. She was rushed to a local hospital and remained in critical condition until Tuesday when officials confirmed she had died after being taken off life support, WCJB reported.
On Friday morning, around 8 a.m., police responded to a call and found the body of a 17-year-old boy lying on the side of the road. Nearly five hours later, the body of a third victim – a 16-year-old girl – was found in a vehicle later determined to belong to Silvernail. The vehicle was partially submerged in a lake near Malauka Loop, The New York Post reported.
The names of the other two victims have not been released.
The Sheriff’s Office had previously ruled out the possibility that a serial killer is on the loose, though few details about the murders had been released at that time. On Wednesday, Woods tied the murders to a “wannabe gang,” without revealing a potential motive.
“The detectives also have information that [the triple homicide] is possibly tied to what we classify as ‘hybrid gangs,’” Woods said at the time. “’Wannabe gangs’ is what they are.”
“Let’s be frank, anybody who associates with a gang, at some point in their life, they’ve done something wrong — whether they’ve been arrested or not,” Woods said on Tuesday. “It’s not a gang because it’s unicorns and everything else, it’s a gang because they do illegal stuff.”