Teen to be charged as an adult in Delray Beach fatal shooting
Steny Louis will face a second-degree murder charge.
With an arm raised in the air one April afternoon, Einstein Mondesir screamed. He’d been shot.
The 21-year-old stumbled in a circle around a nearby car. More shots were fired.
A recently released Delray Beach police report details Mondesir’s final moments and pins 17-year-old Steny Louis to the April 29 homicide.
Louis, who is a few months shy of hi s 1 8t h bi r t hday, was booked Monday into the Palm Beach County Jail. After two weeks in a juvenile assessment center, Louis now faces murder charges in the county’s adult criminal court. A Palm Beach County grand jury began reviewing his case May 1.
Louis’ appearance Tuesday morning at the Palm Beach Count y Jail before Judge Dina Keever-Agrama on charges of second-degree murder and being an accessory to the death of a person was delayed until today so a private attorney hired by Louis’ family can be present.
He is the second juvenile charged as an adult with mur- der this year in Palm Beach County. Walter Brooms, 17, was charged in March in the slaying of Makayla Dennard, 15, of Riviera Beach in December.
Mondesir and several others were in a carport that Saturday afternoon on Ilene Court in the Lucaya Delray neighborhood. They started to yell at about 2 p.m., a witness told police. Then the first shot was fired.
Witnesses say Mondesir stumbled around a maroon Chevrolet Malibu screaming in pain. Another shot was fired.
“How d o y o u l i k e me n ow? ” L o u i s re p o r t e d l y cried as he pumped more shots into Mondesir’s chest.
The 10th-grader at Atlantic High School then fled in a silver Saturn station wagon, police said. Surveillance footage from the Lucaya Delray’s leasing office captured the station wagon’s license tag. It was registered to Louis’ home on Southwest 14th Avenue.
While being driven to the Police Department, Louis allegedly told officers that he “was just defending myself ” when he shot Mondesir. Asked what he meant, Louis replied, “I was just trying to leave the incident.”
He admitted being there when Mondesir was killed, but denied pulling the trigger.