By The Associated Press

Published: Friday, March 22, 2013, 5:39 p.m.
Updated: Friday, March 22, 2013

BRUNSWICK, Ga. — Police arrested two teenagers Friday who are suspected in the shooting death of “a happy, cheerful baby” in a stroller and the wounding of his mother during an attempted robbery.

Seventeen-year-old De'Marquis Elkins is charged as an adult with first-degree murder, along with a 14-year-old who was not identified because he is a juvenile, Police Chief Tobe Green said.

The chief said the motive of the “horrendous act” is still under investigation and the weapon has not been found.

The 13-month-old's mother, Sherry West, wept as she told reporters how she had pleaded with the youngsters who approached her Thursday morning as she took her baby for a walk in this tiny coastal town.

“He asked me for money and I said I didn't have it,” she said. “He kept asking and I just said ‘I don't have it.' And he said, ‘Do you want me to kill your baby?' And I said, ‘No, don't kill my baby!' ”

West said the gunman fired four shots, the first into the ground, but she assumed the gun wasn't real.

Then he fired at her head and the bullet grazed her left ear — she has a scab and bruising there. He fired again and shot her in the left leg above the knee. “I didn't know I was hurt.”

“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 down London Street with the little boy.”

Beverly Anderson's family owns the rental property where West has lived for about six years.

“The house has a front porch with a swing and we'd see him out on the swing with his mother,” Anderson said. “He was a happy, cheerful baby.”

It's not the mother's first loss of a child to violence. Sherry West said her 18-year-old son, Shaun Glassey, was killed in New Jersey.

Glassey was killed with a steak knife in March 2008 during an attack involving several other teens in Gloucester County, N.J., according to news reports from the time.

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