by A Florida sheriff railed against gun control Friday while announcing the arrest of two minors in connection with a series of shootings that left three teenagers dead.
Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said during a Press conference the two suspects were charged with first degree murder.
Court records obtained by NBC News on Friday indicate one boy is 17 and the second is 12. A third suspect, 16, remains at large.
NBC News does not typically name minors charged with a crime, even those charged as adults.
“There are people out there watching, and it includes some of you in the media, who want to blame the one thing that doesn’t have the skill or the ability to commit the crime itself, and that’s the gun. These individuals committed the crime,” Woods told reporters.
The sheriff said the suspects obtained the weapons used in the shootings through carjackings.
“All the gun laws we put in place didn’t stop it, did they? Neither do the new ones. Because here’s the fact: the bad guy will get a gun no matter what law he lays down. These minors shouldn’t even own a firearm, but they did,” Woods added.
Woods’ comments came more than a week after the first victim, 16-year-old Layla Silvernail, was found on March 30 bleeding from a gunshot wound on the side of a road in Marion County, about 60 miles northwest of Orlando. She later she died.
On March 31, authorities said a 17-year-old was discovered lying alongside a road with a fatal gunshot wound just a few miles from where Silvernail was found.
The third victim, another 16-year-old girl, was found dead Saturday inside Silvernail’s vehicle, which was partially submerged at the edge of a nearby body of water, authorities said. She also had a fatal gunshot wound. During Friday’s press conference, Woods said the teen was discovered in the trunk.
The three teenage victims and the suspects, Woods said, knew each other and were involved in committing robberies and robberies and had gang affiliations.
“Now, even though we had it out there and it was gang related, we don’t have anything specific to say that it was some rivalry or something like that that caused it. But yet, each and every one of them in some shape or form is associated with a gang,” Woods said.
“Basically in simple terms, there is no honor among thieves. And at some point, these three individuals turned on our three victims and murdered them. Two of them right there. They fled the scene, but left a lot of evidence in their wake.”
The boys, ages 12 and 17, are being held at a state juvenile justice center, according to a spokesman for the sheriff’s office.
Woods lamented how society does not adequately punish juvenile delinquents. He took aim at the nation’s educational system.
“Our school districts, not just here, but across the state and nation need to stop minimizing the actions of their students. Hold them accountable. That’s where the failure is.”
Gun control debates have erupted across the country following the March 27 mass shooting at a Nashville Christian school that killed six people, including three 9-year-olds. In response to the shooting, hundreds of protesters packed the Tennessee Capitol calling for the Republican-led Statehouse to pass gun control measures. Republican lawmakers voted Thursday to expel two black Democrats for their House floor protests against gun violence last week.
according to a letter of inquiry published in 2022 in the New England Journal of Medicine, firearms became the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in 2020, killing more people ages 1-19 in the US than car crashes, drug overdoses or cancer.
The investigation found that more than 4,300 people died from firearm-related injuries that year, an increase of 29% over 2019.
“In the last 40 years, and almost certainly before then, this is the first time that firearm injuries have outnumbered motor vehicle crashes among children,” said letter co-author Jason Goldstick, a research associate professor. at the University of Michigan.
Goldstick said homicides, rather than suicides, made up the majority of firearm deaths among children and teens in 2020. Murders by firearms, which American youth disproportionately affectedincreased 33% from 2019 to 2020.
melissa-chan and Aria Bendix contributed.
