Antonio West Santiago’s Murder-Truth!

Antonio West Santiago’s Murder-Truth!

 
Summary of eRumor:
 
A viral email compares the killing of 18-month-old Antonio Santiago by two African-American teenagers in March 2013 to the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, which fueled racial tensions.

The Truth:

It is true that two African-American teenagers murdered 18-month-old Antonio Santiago (who was misidentified in the eRumor as Antonio West) and injured his mother in an attempted armed robbery in Brunswick, Georgia.

De’Marquise Elkins was found guilty of Santiago’s murder in August 2013. He was spared from the death penalty because he was 17 at the time of the murder, which is too young to face the death penalty under Georgia law, the Huffington Post

 
reports.

Elkins was sentenced in September 2013 to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Elkins’ alleged accomplice, Dominique Lang, 15, testified during the trial that Elkins counted down from five before he shot Santiago because his mother, Sherry West, would not give him her purse. The case against Lang is still pending, the Guardian

 
reports.

But while the eRumor’s account of Santiago’s death is true, the claims that the story didn’t draw national media attention or public outrage are false.  Many national media outlets like CBS News and the Associated Press followed the case. The extensive pre-trial publicity actually forced the trial to be moved more than 300 miles away to Marietta, Georgia, the Marietta Daily Journal reports.

The parallels drawn between the murders of Santiago, Brown and Martin are a matter of personal perspective and opinion.

 

Posted 09/09/14

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