EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (AP) — Two teenagers were charged with murder Tuesday in the killings of five members of an Illinois family who were shot at three different locations.
A 16-year-old boy will be prosecuted as an adult, while the case against a 15-year-old girl will start in juvenile court before a possible transfer to the St. Clair County criminal court, the county prosecutor’s office said.
Five people were killed and two more were wounded, primarily on Sunday, in a “targeted mass shooting” in East St. Louis, a city across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, police said. Troopers stopped a vehicle and arrested the teens Sunday in a state park, lllinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly said.
Court documents don’t reveal a motive. But Marcus May, the father of the 15-year-old, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the girl was upset with family members and plotted the attacks with Ja’ymeir Davis, her boyfriend.
May said he lost a nephew, two stepchildren, his mother and a sister. They were 74, 49, 25, 24 and 21 years old.
Davis was charged with murder and seven other crimes. It was not immediately known if he had a lawyer who could comment on the allegations. A court hearing was pending.
The shootings mostly occurred over the weekend, but one victim who died, May’s sister Cherie May, was shot days earlier, according to a court filing.