FORT PIERCE — Shelitta Woods calls the past six months “miserable.”

“You got to understand, it’d been like 13, 14 years before I had another child,” Woods said. “It was just me and Lil’ Bo, just me and Lil’ Bo, everywhere I go, me and Lil’ Bo.”

Woods’ 16-year-old son, Torenda “Lil’ Bo” Youngblood Jr., was fatally shot at his bus stop March 9, two days after Demetrius Wells, 18, sustained fatal wounds in a drive-by shooting. Two men also were hit by gunfire during separate shootings between the homicides. (more…)

STUART — Described as a loving father and caring person, Jerome Hutchinson was found early Monday morning face down on the sidewalk leading to his East Stuart residence.

The 24-year-old man had been shot in the chest, the second to die in an exceptionally violent weekend in Stuart. The first was Michael Morrison, 43, found early Saturday morning on his back next to his Jeep at The Crossings at Indian Run Apartments less than four miles away.

Morrison also had been shot in the chest, but police haven’t found a nexus between the two killings, police spokesman Sgt. Marty Jacobson said Monday.
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A federal jury Wednesday will likely hear their last words from attorneys before deciding whether Ricardo Sanchez Jr. and Daniel Troya will spend their lives in prison or face the death penalty for the 2006 murders of a family of four.

Family slain

Jose and Yessica Escobedo with sons Luis Julian (left) and Luis Damian (right). Husband, wife and two children from Greenacres found shot to death off Florida’s Turnpike in northern Port St. Lucie. More news, photos

Federal prosecutors today presented their last evidence against Sanchez and Troya, both 25, who jurors this month found guilty of the murders of Jose Luis Escobedo, his wife, Yessica, and sons Luis Julian and Luis Damian. Defense attorneys since last week have been trying to convince jurors to spare the men’s lives.

Donnie Murrell, Sanchez’s attorney, has built his case on the facts that Sanchez has a low IQ, grew up in a crime-infested environment, watched his father beat his mother and had a mentally disabled older brother who suffered from violent seizures and is in a prison mental hospital after trying to burn down the family home.

Troya’s attorney James Eisenberg has pointed to several events - including the shooting death of Troya’s friend John Pierre Kamel when Troya was 13, the suicide of a family friend and bad influence from his uncle Isidro - as factors that changed Troya, bringing him to a life of crime.
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WEST PALM BEACH — The Escobedo family didn’t last six months in south Florida.

Instead, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Carlton said, the family of four met their deaths in a violent, execution-style killing October 13, 2006 at the hands of two men, Ricardo Sanchez, Jr. and Daniel Troya.

See more in the Palm Beach Post here

In opening arguments in the federal death penalty trial of Sanchez and Troya, together with the drug conspiracy trials for Danny Varela and Liana Lee Lopez, Carlton boiled down all the crimes to a single word - drugs. (more…)