Utah teen shot over $55, phone and iPod
On Friday, just after midnight, they found Deserae Turner. The 14- year- old girl was alone in a dry canal in Smithfield, Utah, close to the city’s public high school.
The girl’s disappearance six hours earlier shook her hometown, a small Utah village called Amalga a few kilometres away from Smithfield. Her family became concerned Thursday evening when the ninth grader failed to return home from school. Turner’s family filed a missing- person report with the Cache County Sheriff ’s Office around 6:30 p.m.
What came next was worse. “I haven’t seen anything like this case in the 18 years that I’ve worked for Cache County,” said James Swink, the Cache County attorney.
Authorities discovered Turner had been the victim of an apparent robbery and attempt on her life. On Tuesday, documents filed by Utah prosecutors alleged that two 16- year- old boys had lured her into the canal. The boys told Turner that they would sell her a knife. Instead, according to the documents, they planned to kill her. One boy allegedly shot her in the head with a .22 calibre handgun. The teenagers stole her iPod, her phone and US$ 55 she was carrying in her purse.
Friends of the family found Turner in the canal bed. They were searching the area based on Turner’s cellphone information, which local authorities had provided.
Upon discovering Turner, the friends called for emergency medical help. Turner was prone, semi- conscious from a gunshot wound to the back of the head.
But she was alive. As of Tuesday morning, she remained in an induced coma in critical condition.