On Martaevious Santiago’s 17th birthday, he shot his 13-year-old sister in the back of the head.
She had just hugged him in the kitchen of the family’s Florida City home, police said. As they separated and Tedra King walked away, Martaevious pointed a loaded semi-automatic handgun at her. Then he pulled the trigger and killed her.
Martaevious told police it was an accident.
The shooting happened Tuesday night inside a modest Florida City subdivision called Washington Park. Outside the home on Wednesday, shocked family members — some on the way to identify the young girl’s body at the morgue — demanded privacy.
“Everybody that knows a word of prayer, please pray for the Bess family,” close family friend Benita Collier asked.
Martaevious, whose life has been marred by gun violence and who was
featured as part of a series of stories earlier this year on youth surviving gun violence by Miami Herald news partner WLRN, called police after the shooting and said he had accidentally shot his sister.
Police charged him with aggravated manslaughter of a child and possession of a weapon during the commission of a felony. The charge does not assume intent, police said.
Martaevious said he got the gun, a semi-automatic handgun, from a 14-year-old friend whom police did not name, but who was also arrested for an unrelated outstanding warrant. It was unclear Wednesday exactly who was in the home just after 8 p.m. when Tedra was shot other than Martaevious and his friend.
His step-father, Vernon Williams, said he was at home during the shooting and so was Tedra’s mother Lakesha Bess, who held her daughter after she was shot. Williams told WPLG Channel 10 that Martaevious said he had made a terrible mistake.
‘“I’m sorry, it was an accident,’” Williams said Martaevious told him. “’I’m sorry, Dad.’”
The WLRN story, which ran in February, explained how a week before last Christmas, Martaevious was in a car in front of his home when gunfire broke out. He was shot in the leg. His friend was shot in the head and survived. Earlier last year, Martaevious’s younger brother Martwan Santiago, 15, was shot four times while playing outside his apartment.
The bullet that hit Martwan’s spine left him paralyzed from the waist down.
“I never knew how he was feeling until I got shot. Now, I feel the pain,” Martaevious told WLRN in February. “Hang around the wrong crowd of people, this is what happens.”
