Nearly five years after a 15-year-old Boone High School student was gunned down during a robbery, a longtime suspect has been arrested, Orange County Sheriff’s Office officials said Friday.
DeAndre Eugene Florence, 23, is facing first-degree murder and racketeering charges following the December 2018 killing of Alejandro Vargas Martinez.
“These five years have been very hard for us,” said Alejandro’s aunt Dolka Martinez, as his mother stood beside her in silence holding a photo of the slain teenager. “We think about Ale every single day. We talk about Ale every single day. There’s not one day that passes where we don’t mention Ale. Losing a loved one is very painful, extremely painful. Especially the way we lost Ale. They say time heals but to be honest, it does not. It’s just a patch to a broken heart. You just have to live with it.”
Alejandro was killed on Dec. 18, 2018 around 6:30 a.m. According to Det. Brian Savelli, who investigated the case, Florence, who was 18 at the time, shot and killed Alejandro while attempting to steal his cell phone as the teenager walked to school. Another suspect in the case, Denim Williams, was only 16 at the time of the killing. The second suspect was shot to death during another robbery weeks after Alejandro was killed.
“Alejandro ‘Alex’ Vargas Martinez was walking to Boone High School like he did every single day, just like all these high school kids you see every single day, on his phone talking to his mom when he was robbed, shot and left to die in the street,” Sheriff John Mina said at a press conference Friday morning.
Mina said Florence was a suspect “from the very beginning” but it took years to build a case against him. The case was revived when the Attorney General’s Office launched a cold case unit to examine long-open homicide investigations. Deputies submitted Alejandro’s case and a statewide probe not only connected Florence to Alejandro’s death but also led to racketeering charges related to a series of other robberies, commercial burglaries and car thefts in Orange and Seminole counties that date back to late 2018 and early 2019, court records show.
“Throughout the five years, there have been nine crimes we were able to link so that takes a little time to piece together and actually prepare a decent case,” Savelli said. “So although he’s been a main suspect for years, it takes time to piece forensics, interviews and things of that nature together to come up with a good case.”
Savelli said others may “potentially” be arrested. The gun used to kill the teenage victim was never found, he said.
Alejandro’s family said they have been waiting for an arrest to be announced for years but they never lost faith that his killer would one day face charges.
“We know that the truth is more powerful than anything and we know that justice was on it’s way to be served,” Martinez said.
