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SACRAMENTO-

Two teenage boys were killed after attempting to burglarize a home along Arcade Boulevard.

Sacramento Police responded to a burglary just after midnight on Sunday morning. When they arrived, they found two suspects had been shot and killed by the occupants.

Neighbors said the owner is an elderly woman, who has been a victim of several burglaries since her husband passed away.

“This Easter, she was robbed, and so she had replaced her deadbolt locks with double locking deadbolts and they still got in after that,” friend and neighbor, Celeste Gawehn said.

Gawehn said her the woman asked a family member to stay with her, in case she was burglarized again. We are told, her family member fired several rounds in self defense, and killed the intruders – 17-year-old Steven Crider and 14-year-old Michael Sambrano.

As FOX40 was news gathering, we spotted several people in tears, walking to the scene of the shooting. One of the girls was Ashleigh Davison, Crider’s girlfriend. She and her mother said he was a 17 year-old boy with no parents, had no home, and was in and out of Child Protective Services his entire life.

They believe the system had failed him.

“I don’t blame them for doing what they did,” Ashleigh’s mother, Tracy Webb said about the shooting. “It’s not right to break in and to burglarize people’s homes. No, it’s not. But at the same time, a life has been lost. A life has been taken. I’m sure he and a friend, Michael Sambrano, were doing what they thought they needed to do to survive.”

“He is a good person,” Davison cried. “Was a good person. He was just misunderstood.”

Police said the investigation is ongoing.