Two teens charged in fatal shootings of five family members in Illinois

A boy, 16, and girl, 15, were charged with murder after the family members were shot at three different locations

Two teenagers were charged with murder Tuesday in the killings of five members of an Illinois family who were shot at three different locations.

A 16-year-old boy will be prosecuted as an adult, while the case against a 15-year-old girl will start in juvenile court before a possible transfer to the St Clair county criminal court, the county prosecutor’s office said.

Five people were killed and two more were wounded, primarily on Sunday, in a “targeted mass shooting” in East St Louis, an Illinois city across the Mississippi river from St Louis, police said. Troopers stopped a vehicle and arrested the teens Sunday in a state park, the Illinois state police director, Brendan Kelly, said.

Court documents don’t reveal a motive. But Marcus May, the father of the 15-year-old, told the St Louis Post-Dispatch that the girl was upset with family members and plotted the attacks with Ja’ymeir Davis, her boyfriend.

May said he lost a nephew, two stepchildren, his mother and a sister. They were 74, 49, 25, 24 and 21 years old.

Davis was charged with murder and seven other crimes. It was not immediately known if he had a lawyer who could comment on the allegations. A court hearing was pending.

The shootings mostly occurred over the weekend, but one victim who died, May’s sister, Cherie May, was shot days earlier, according to a court filing.