When St. Petersburg police caught a teenage boy breaking into a car, stealing a gun and concealing it in his waistband, prosecutors gave him a break.
The teen was placed on probation and was allowed to finish out the school year before he would be forced to serve 15 days in a juvenile detention center this summer.
He was fitted with an ankle monitor and sent home. But before summer vacation started, he fatally shot his 11-year-old brother with another stolen gun.
Prosecutors have now charged the 14-year-old boy as an adult in connection with his younger brother’s death. The teen, who the Tampa Bay Times is not naming because he is a minor, is accused of shooting and killing Amir Williams on April 26.
He is charged with manslaughter and being a delinquent in possession of a firearm, both second-degree felonies, records show. He has been transferred to the Pinellas County Jail to await trial.
Amir’s older brother told St. Petersburg police he had found the gun in an alley near his home, then brought it home and accidentally fired the weapon while playing with it.
The gun was reported stolen during a vehicle burglary in the city two days before the incident.
There was no school on the day of the shooting, and the boys were home with their 13-year-old sister while their mother was at work, police said.
Pinellas-Pasco state attorney Bruce Bartlett said his office is cracking down on youth gun violence and hopes the teen’s charges “send a message.”
“It’s an epidemic out there,” he said. “They treat it like a video game. They’re pointing (guns) around and shooting people and everything else. It’s just — it’s crazy. It’s got to stop. We have got to get these guns off the street.”
Bartlett said the teen’s previous gun theft charge was filed in juvenile court, which is not public record under Florida law.
The teen told police he found another stolen gun in an alley on the day his brother was killed.
Bartlett said ankle monitor data corroborates part of the teen’s story: He was in the alley at the time he said he found the gun. But the state attorney isn’t convinced the boy stumbled upon the weapon.
“I think he probably stole it out of a car,” Bartlett said. “It was not his first rodeo.”
The state prosecutor’s office said it found inconsistencies in other parts of the teen’s story.
Bartlett said he gave police varying accounts of the shooting. In one retelling, he was in the bathroom and heard a gun go off. In another, he told police he thought the gun was empty, but he had forgotten to take the clip out. He aimed at the wall, but hit his brother, the teen said.
An autopsy on Amir revealed bullet holes in his wrist and temple. Bartlett said this is consistent with Amir holding up his hands as if a gun was being aimed at him.
“I can’t say that he intended to kill his brother,” Bartlett said. “I think he was just screwing around. To me, it suggests that he did point the gun at his brother when it went off.”
Police body cam footage shows the boys’ mother screamed at her 14-year-old son after she arrived home the day of the shooting and indicated that she had previously told him to get rid of the gun.
“They all knew obviously he had a gun,” Bartlett said. “Nobody really did anything about it.”
Prosecutors do not intend to charge the boys’ mother in the case. When reached by phone, Anaushkin Donaldson told a Tampa Bay Times reporter she would call back again and hung up.
Family members who gathered outside the home in the wake of the shooting remembered Amir as an energetic 6th grader who tried to make everyone laugh.
Darryl Walls, who is the grandfather of Amir’s step-sister, said the family isn’t shocked by the charges, but that they aren’t “thrilled” either.
“I think it’s a little harsh,” he said.
Walls said authorities allowed the teen to attend his brother’s funeral on May 11.
“They let him grieve with the family,” Walls said.
He spent the next day, Mother’s Day, at home, he said. St. Petersburg police picked him up the following Monday.
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