A killing that stunned a Georgia coastal community and made headlines throughout the nation will begin next week in a Cobb County courtroom.
De’Marquise Elkins, 18, stands accused of shooting 13-month-old Antonio Santiago in the face with a .22-caliber revolver in March as the toddler was riding in a stroller being pushed by his mother along their Brunswick street.
Elkins will stand trial Monday, along with his sister, Sabrina Elkins, 19, and mother, Karimah Elkins, 36. The two women are charged with evidence tampering on allegations they hid the murder weapon.
The young man’s aunt, 33-year-old Katrina Elkins, is charged with making false statements to police and will be tried separately. So will Dominique Lang, 15, who prosecutors allege is the accomplice.
The complicated case was moved to Cobb, 300 miles from Brunswick, because the shooting death of the baby and subsequent arrests have divided people in that town of 15,000 along racial and economic lines.
The suspects are African-American, and the tiny victim was biracial, his mother white and his father Hispanic.
Brunswick is the seat of Glynn County, home to some of the nation’s wealthiest ZIP codes on Sea Island, Jekyll Island and St. Simons Island. But Elkins and Lang come from a poor neighborhood pockmarked with boarded-up houses.
“This has exposed a breakdown in our community that ought to concern everybody,” said Jonathon Miller, an attorney for the baby’s father, Luis Santiago. “That something like this could ever happen is troubling.”
Sherry West, the toddler’s mother, told police she was pushing Antonio in his stroller on the morning of March 21 when she was approached by two males who demanded money. When she told them she didn’t have any, they persisted, West said.
“ ‘And he said, ‘Do you want me to kill your baby?’ And I said, ‘No, don’t kill my baby!’ ” she later told reporters.
West said the older male fired first into the ground. When she didn’t see a shell casing ejected, she said she assumed the weapon wasn’t real. West claimed he then fired at her head and the bullet grazed her left ear. She then said he shot her in the left leg above the knee.
“The boy proceeded to go around to the stroller, and he shot my baby in the face,” she said. “And then he just shoved me when I started screaming and he ran.”
Within days, Elkins and Lang were arrested. Evidence was presented to a grand jury within a week.
The speed at which the case has progressed — despite a backlog of cases in Glynn County — has raised doubts among some in Brunswick’s African-American community that the Elkinses and Lang can receive a fair trial.
Mark Spalding, a spokesman for the Glynn County District Attorney’s Office, said Brunswick Judicial Circuit Judge Stephen Kelley has “set the tone and tempo” of the proceedings, but questions persist.
“There hasn’t been a thorough investigation of what really happened,” said Gary Cook, an African-American neighborhood activist who knows the Elkins family well.
Others have taken a different stance, saying this case illustrates the level of unchecked violence being committed by young people.
At a recent town hall in Brunswick, some residents expressed frustration that it took a tragedy of this magnitude to get the attention of public officials and law enforcement.
“(Crime like this) hasn’t just started,” said Felicia Harris, a lifelong resident.
At a pre-trial hearing earlier this month, prosecutors hinted that Lang may in fact be a cooperating witness, responding to a claim by public defender Kevin Gough, De’Marquise Elkins’ attorney, that the slain toddler’s mother was the only witness to the shooting.
“Counsel is forgetting Lang,” Glynn County Assistant District Attorney Andrew Ekonomou said.
Investigators testified Aug. 2 that Lang confessed to being at the scene, along with a “kid named Marquise,” when Antonio was shot, according to news reports of the testimony. They said Lang’s testimony was consistent with the account of the baby’s mother.
Adding to the bizarre details of this case, there are some in Brunswick who believe the parents may know more than they’ve told police.
West’s 21-year-old daughter, Ashley Glassey, told reporters that her mother called her the night of the shooting and asked when she thought she’d receive a life insurance payout.
Glassey also claimed that her mother changed her story, saying initially that the baby was shot first.
Meanwhile, it was recently disclosed that traces of gun residue were found on the parents on the day of the shooting but not, Gough said, on Elkins.
The GBI forensic report stated that the finding “supports the possibility that [Louis Santiago] discharged a firearm, was in close proximity to a firearm upon discharge, or came into contact with an item whose surface bears (gunshot residue).”
“There is nothing to these allegations,” said Miller, Santiago’s lawyer. “There are numerous chemicals that show up as gunshot residue. It is a very unreliable test.”
Santiago, who told police he was at a nearby Wal-Mart when the shooting occurred, is devastated that anyone thinks he could be involved in his son’s brutal death, Miller said.
“It’s absolutely tearing him up,” Miller said. “It’s totally unfair for the public defender’s office to raise these doubts just to bolster their own case.”
Whatever the outcome of the case, Cook hopes it can serve as a catalyst for positive change in all communities.
“There’s a lot of kids like (Elkins),” he said. “These kids have been forgotten by their neighbors, by society. We’ve got to address that if we’re going to stop this cycle of violence that affects all of us.”
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