Tag Archives: Endia Martin

Chicago Woman Acquitted of Providing Gun Used in Teenager’s Murder

By Jennifer Keiper, WLS-AM 890 News

(CHICAGO) A federal jury has acquitted a Chicago woman of giving a handgun to a juvenile knowing it would be used to commit violence in the 2014 shooting death of 14-year old Endia Martin.

Vandetta Redwood, 35, was charged with handing her teenage cousin the gun used to kill Martin during a fight and having a firearm in a school zone.

Redwood had faced a maximum 15-year prison term if convicted. After being acquitted she told reporters that she’s torn up inside, stressed out, and, “You just don’t know what I’ve been through.”

Her cousin, who is now 17, is awaiting trial on murder charges.

Redwood’s other cousin, Donnell Flora, is serving a 100-year prison sentence for first-degree murder and attempted murder for supplying the gun.

Redwood was also acquitted in a case brought by the state.

Endia Martin, 14, was shot in the back. Her friend’s arm was grazed by a bullet.

© WLS-AM 890

100 Years for Endia Martin Shooting

By Nick Gale, WLS-AM News

(CHICAGO)  The man found responsible for supplying the gun used to kill 14-year-old Endia Martin in a 2014 shooting has been sentenced to 100 years in prison.

Saying, “There are no excuses or rationalization for giving a child a gun to take to a ridiculous fight about a boy,” Judge Thaddeus Wilson sentenced Donnell Flora to 100 years Monday. Flora was found guilty of providing the gun that police say his niece used to shoot Martin after a fight on social media over a boy grew to a street brawl.

Flora, who was shot in 2009 and is paralyzed from the waist down, said in court that he was sorry for what happened and, “It never was supposed to go the way it went.”

He went on to tell the judge he wished he could trade places with Martin.

Flora’s niece is set to stand trial in May.

@ 2016 WLS-AM News

Relative of Endia Martin’s alleged murderers invokes 5th Amendment

Vandetta Redwood | Chicago Police

(CHICAGO) A relative of the teenage girl accused of shooting Endia Martin invoked the Fifth Amendment when she took the stand at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse Thursday night, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.

Vandetta Redwood said she worked on April 28, 2014, and came to her South Side home, where her cousin Donnell Flora would occasionally stop by to do laundry.

But when Flora’s attorney Joel Brodsky asked her where she went afterward that day, Redwood said, “I plead the Fifth Amendment.”

Redwood, who sat next to her lawyer, repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment when Brodsky and Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Athena Farmakis pressed her for more details of her connection to the incident.

Flora, 27, is on trial for 14-year-old Endia’s murder and the attempted murder of another teen who was injured when Flora’s niece opened fire in the 900 block of West Garfield.

Flora’s niece, now 16, is currently awaiting trial in Juvenile Court.

Flora’s attorneys said he refused to give his niece a gun when she asked him for one to protect herself from the rivals she had been feuding with on social media.

He did, however, give the gun to Redwood, who accompanied the girl to the deadly fight, defense attorneys maintain.

Flora was at the scene, too, according to court testimony.

But his lawyers said Redwood was the adult relative who encouraged the girl by screaming “shoot the b—-.”

Mob action and obstruction of justice charges were filed against Redwood but eventually dismissed.

Before prosecutors rested their case Thursday, they presented an interrogation video in which a crying Flora changed his stories several times but admitted he gave the girl the gun but said “it wasn’t supposed to be loaded.”

Flora’s trial is expected to continue before Judge Thaddeus Wilson on Friday.

— Chicago Sun-Times