Prince George’s County police said Friday that they have charged a teenage boy with murder in last week’s shooting of a 16-year-old girl near DuVal High School.
Police Chief Malik Aziz said officers arrested a 17-year-old Glenarden boy and charged him with killing Jayda Medrano-Moore while she was walking home from the school in Lanham on Sept. 11.
Chief Aziz said Jayda was trying to intervene in a dispute between two groups when someone pulled out a gun and shot her. She was pronounced dead at a hospital shortly afterward.
The suspect told a friend that he was fighting over a gun with Jayda when the gun went off and mortally wounded the girl, according to charging documents.
The boy, a student at Charles Herbert Flowers High School in Springdale, faces first- and second-degree murder charges, as well as assault and firearms charges.
“It seems like we are here way too often,” Chief Aziz said. “I’m frustrated that the violent few are disrupting the education and promising future of our great children in Prince George’s County. Now that we’ve made this arrest, I’m hoping to bring some degree of comfort to the family.”
NBC affiliate WRC-TV previously reported that Jayda was with her brother when she was shot.
Chief Aziz said police haven’t found the murder weapon and don’t know how the suspect came into possession of the gun.
The chief also suggested that the suspect was unfazed by the crime in the days after Jayda’s death, saying “he was … living his life, as if this did not occur at every opportunity.”
Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks offered her condolences for Jayda and her family.
“Jayda was a star in every sense of the word,” Ms. Alsobrooks said. “It goes without saying that all of us are just speechless and we are just so devastated and so angry about the loss of Jayda. It shouldn’t have happened. It didn’t have to happen.”
The suspect is being treated as an adult and is held without bond. Authorities said he had no prior contact with police.
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