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© RUSS BYNUM/ASSOCIATED PRESSSherry West was comforted by Luis Santiago, the child’s father.
A pair of teenagers were arrested Friday and accused of fatally shooting a 13-month-old baby in the face and wounding his mother during their morning stroll through a leafy, historic neighborhood.

Sherry West had just been to the post office a few blocks from her apartment on Thursday morning and was pushing her son, Antonio, in his stroller while they walked past gnarled oak trees and blooming azaleas in the coastal city of Brunswick.

West said a tall, skinny teenager, accompanied by a smaller boy, asked her for money.

''He asked me for money and I said I didn't have it,'' she said Friday from her apartment, which was scattered with her son's toys and movies.

''When you have a baby, you spend all your money on babies. They're expensive. And 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!' ''

One of the teens fired four shots, grazing West's ear and striking her in the leg, before he walked around to the stroller and shot the baby in the face.

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© APAntonio Santiago was with his mother, Sherry West, when he was killed.
De'Marquis Elkins, 17, 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. It wasn't immediately clear whether the boys had attorneys.

Police announced the arrest Friday afternoon after combing school records and canvassing neighborhoods searching for the pair. The chief said the motive of the ''horrendous act'' was still under investigation and the weapon had not been found.

''I feel glad that justice will be served,'' West said. ''It's not something I'm going to live with very well. I'm just glad they caught him.''

It's not the mother's first loss of a child to violence. West said her 18-year-old son, Shaun Glassey, was killed in New Jersey in 2008.

Bernie Weisenfeld, a spokesman for the Gloucester County prosecutor's office, said Friday that Glassey was armed with a steak knife during an attempted ambush, but the 17-year-old target of the attack got the knife away from him ''and Glassey ended up on the wrong end of the knife.''