VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. – A 17-year-old girl faces murder charges after turning herself in and allegedly confessing to a role in a shooting that left a 17-year-old boy dead and another person injured Wednesday night in Pierson, what the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office says stemmed from an attempted robbery.
Deputies responded around 10:15 p.m. to the shooting in the area of 380 Main Street, locating a vehicle crashed along the road and its driver — identified as Odie Carbajal, 17, of Crescent City — unresponsive.
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Carbajal had multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead, according to the sheriff’s office. There were two other passengers in the vehicle, an 18-year-old who had been shot in the leg and another who was uninjured, the sheriff’s office said.
Detectives have since reportedly determined that Tania Lopez Morales, 17, of Pierson, was among three other people who attempted to rob those in the car. Morales had allegedly contacted Carbajal on Instagram and arranged to meet him in Pierson to purchase a quarter pound of marijuana.
At the meeting location, Morales and another suspect approached Carbajal at the driver’s side door, both aiming firearms with the intent to rob him, the sheriff’s office said in a news release. The suspects fired their weapons during the attempted robbery, striking Carbajal and the 18-year-old who was with him in the car, the release states.
According to Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood, the two other people who were with Morales are believed to both be 15 years old.
“Yesterday we got a phone call that the people who were involved in the shooting wanted to turn themselves in. They apparently had confessed to a family member that they were involved in what had occurred the night before. So, we come in contact with a 17-year-old who basically confesses to the whole thing. She said they they had ‘Ordered up weed;’ her, her 15-year-old brother and a 15-year-old friend had ‘ordered up weed’ from our victims, a quarter pound of weed, and they decided rather than pay for it, ‘Let’s just take it,’ and in her words, ‘Things got out of control,’” Chitwood said Friday. “Two of them, she being one — and we’re trying to determine what 15-year-old — then open fire, and then they fled.”
Morales faces charges of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder, the sheriff’s office said.
“We have the 17-year-old who’s been charged as a juvenile, we expect her to be bumped up to ‘adult’ because of her age and because this is a homicide case, and we are still trying to discern through DNA and through forensic evidence what role the other two 15-year-olds played before, or if we even charge- if we get to that point with the other ones,” Chitwood said.
Two 9mm firearms believed to have been used in the shooting were found in a shed on the girl’s property, according to the sheriff’s office.
News 6 is naming Morales due to the circumstances of the case.
An investigation is ongoing and additional charges are possible. Anyone with information is asked to call the VSO Major Case Unit at 386-254-1537.
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