Two Cleveland men are facing charges for allegedly murdering a 17-year-old girl they feared would testify against them.
According to the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office, Jeffrey Doss, 22, ordered Kiechaun Newell, 19, to kill the teenager who had been with them during a robbery at a Citizens Bank in Northfield Village on Aug. 15.
The indictment states that Doss wanted the teenager dead because he feared "he would be implicated in the bank robbery."
On Aug. 19, the 17-year-old — later identified as Breanna Nicole Fluitt — was found shot to death in a vacant lot in East Cleveland.
Three teens who participated in the crime were charged in Cuyahoga County juvenile court. East Cleveland Mayor Gary Norton said the juveniles were 15 years old.
"It is just tragic that we don’t know what our teenagers are up to because literally it appears these teenagers were committing bank robbery and murder in the middle of the night," Norton told newsnet5.com.
Charging documents allege that Fluitt was kidnapped from her home, shot "execution-style," and left for dead in a vacant lot in East Cleveland.
“This is a particularly shocking and depraved crime,” said Prosecutor Tim McGinty. “First, these gang members gutlessly recruited a young girl to do the bank robbery they didn’t have the nerve to do themselves. Then, after their half-baked plot landed their pictures on television, they picked up the girl at her home and executed her so she couldn’t be a witness against them.”
Doss and Newell were charged by a grand jury in an indictment that includes aggravated murder, murder, kidnapping, felonious assault, conspiracy, robbery, theft and having weapons under disability.
Both are being held in the Cuyahoga County Jail. Each has a $1 million bond.
