Shooter gets 20 years for 21-year-old’s death
Joshua Torres shot De’Andre Peyton in the back of the head.
A warning shot fired in the air by Joshua Torres hit De’Andre Peyton in the head as he walked to a store, fatally wounding him.
WEST PALM BEACH — By the time his life was cut short at 21 years, De’Andre Peyton stood out to his friends and family for three things — his smile, his gregarious sense of humor and his signature Mohawk, dyed bright blue.
Tameka Peyton ran her thumb along the edge of her open blue sweater in a courtroom Tuesday as she told Palm Beach County Circuit Judge John Kastrenakes all of this, saying she wore it in memory of her only son, fatally wounded with a shot to the back of the head that she believes he never saw coming as he and his friends walked to a Palm Springs convenience store two years ago.
“Words cannot even explain the
kind of joyful son I raised, and I am so proud of him,” Peyton said, wiping tears from her eyes.
Behind her in the courtroom, Joshua Torres’ mother cried, too. Vanessa Vasquez moments earlier had begged Kastrenakes for mercy in sentencing her son for a single count of manslaughter in De’Andre Peyton’s death. Torres, originally charged with second-degree murder in the July 13, 2013, shooting, also pleaded guilty to three related aggravated battery charges.
Vasquez had told Kastrenakes she would trade her own life for her son’s if she could. But her son was still alive, Kastrenakes later reminded her, adding that while Torres’ relatives and children could come and visit him in prison, Peyton’s family would never see him again, and his two young children would grow up without a father.
For that, the judge said, there was no way he could accept defense attorney Jim Eisenberg’s request for a sentence lower than the recommended minimum of nearly 14 years in prison. He also rejected Assistant State Attorney Aleathea McRoberts’ 30-year sentence recommendation, ending the emotional sentencing hearing with a 20-year prison sentence for Torres, 25, of Palm Springs.
Tameka Peyton had told the judge that she had watched him handling other cases on Tuesday before he called Torres’ case and felt a sense of peace wash over her, one she said made her feel at ease that the sentence he would give Torres would be just.
So the victim’s mother sat still, even after Kastrenakes’ sentence pronouncement sparked chaos in the courtroom as several of Torres’ relatives wailed in despair. Vasquez cried loudest of all, then fainted as relatives tried to help her walk from the courtroom.
“Help me,” Vasquez repeated in Spanish after she regained consciousness.
Deputies called paramedics and asked everyone to
Circuit judge
clear the courtroom. Torres’ 9-year-old daughter, sitting on the lap of another relative, shielded her eyes with her hands and cried.
The girl, relatives said, had been crying for her father ever since he turned himself in to police after initially denying his involvement in the shooting near his home at Second Avenue and Elizabeth Street. When he surrendered, he told police that three boys had “jumped” him shortly before the shooting, so when he saw the men near his wooden fence he became scared and fired a warning shot in the air along with a few others through the fence hoping to fend them off.
One of Torres’ cousins who testified on his behalf Tuesday was openly incredulous that it was Torres’ shot that killed the victim. He asked how a shot fired so far away could hit him directly in the head.
Kastrenakes, who would later confirm there was no evidence that Peyton and his friends had anything to do with Torres’ claims of being “jumped,” asked the cousin to stay at the podium for a moment so he could explain.
“There’s a saying on the street that a bullet has no eyes,” the judge said. “A bullet doesn’t care where it goes. Even if someone fires a shot in the air and it comes down and hits someone, that is a crime. That is why it’s manslaughter.”
Robert Pratt, one of the young men who was walking with Peyton that night, said the group of friends had spent the entire night watching and re-watching music videos. Peyton, with his high aspirations to make it big in the music industry, had urged the others to stay and watch another video one more time before they went out for snacks, Pratt said.
But the group wanted to go, Pratt said, so Peyton followed along. With Peyton’s fiancee and two daughters seated just feet away from him, Pratt recounted for Kastrenakes how his friend was initially anxious about fatherhood. Pratt remembered laughing as he told his friend: “Man, you’re going to be the best father out there.”
“You all are upset about having to see him in prison,” Pratt told Torres’ family of Torres Tuesday. “But it’s better than only being able to look at him on a T-shirt, I’ll tell you that much.”
Tameka Peyton told Kastrenakes she took solace in the fact that her son had given his life to Christ and been baptized in the Christian faith just five months before he was killed.
Faith, it turns out, was the last message that Torres’ little brother, Hugo Vasquez, gave him before Kastrenakes pronounced Torres’ sentence. Vasquez asked the judge for permission to return to the podium after all the relatives had spoken, and then turned to Torres.
“Keep your head up,” he told him. “Don’t lose faith.”
John Kastrenakes
‘There’s a saying on the street that a bullet has no eyes.’