“It’s always sad when you see a young person who is killed because of guns,” Joyce said. “Obviously, this young man was in a place where he shouldn’t have been, doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. Missouri’s laws are pretty clear on this now, though. What we were left with in this case was a gun possession ... Anybody else in that situation with that charge would have gotten the same result.”

The dead teenager’s cousin, Ernest Williams, 14, said last year that he, Martinez and an 11-year-old friend sneaked out that night, jumped over a backyard fence and looked for pocket change in the car on its owner’s property in the 5900 block of Riverview Boulevard.

Ernest said the man fired without first confronting them.

The teenagers’ friend fled but Ernest stayed with his wounded cousin. Martinez, who lived in the 5200 block of Davison Avenue, died at a hospital. He was a seventh-grader at Confluence Elite Academy in St. Louis.

McDade had pleaded guilty in 1989 in Pemiscot County, Mo., of illegal possession of a weapon and unlawful use of a weapon, court documents say. He also was sentenced in 2013 in St. Louis County Circuit Court to five years on probation on a felony charge of being more than 12 months in arrears on child support.

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