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Teens in Winter Park beating death sentenced to ‘high-risk juvenile commitment'

By Kelly Healey
By Kelly Healey
Two Orange County teenagers convicted of manslaughter were sentenced Monday.
Jesse Sutherland and Simeon Hall were found guilty of killing Winter Park High School student Roger Trindade in 2016. Hall’s attorney, David Fussell, said he expects both teens to spend 12 to 15 months in the high-risk juvenile facility.
The average stay in the juvenile facility is nine to 12 months, but there was neither a minimum nor maximum sentencing given. 
The teens were given a chance to speak about Trindade's death at the sentencing, but neither said made a comment. 
Hall and Sutherland beat Trindade, 15, until he was unconscious in downtown Winter Park’s Central Park. The two spat on Trindade while he was bleeding on the ground.
Trindade was removed from life support after two days.
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Hall and Sutherland were under the age of 18 when the incident happened.
Prosecutors argued Trindade's death was a vicious, adult-style case of manslaughter, but defense attorneys claimed it was a one-time mistake.
In June, Judge Jenifer Harris decided to take an adult sentence off the table, despite the teens being tried as adults. She told families on both sides that throwing Sutherland and Hall in prison would turn them into career criminals.
Read: Key witness testifies in Winter Park beating death trial
But Trindade’s family said they felt disappointed.
"We lost our only son's life. Now they are going to do what -- one year, two years in jail? This is not acceptable. This is not right," Rodrigo Trindade said. "They spit on his dying body."
Read: Witness says teen was 'hyped up' after spitting on Trindade
But Fussell said the teens didn't deserve a prison sentence.
"Both of these kids had just turned 15 when it happened. The evidence was exactly as I laid it out. It's not that they intended to go down there and hit anybody, hurt anybody. They went down there to defend another kid that was a friend of theirs," Fussell said.

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The Trindade family moved to Winter Park from Brazil.
“Every day I’m going to wake up without my boy,” said Roger Trindade’s mother, Adriana Trindade.
The Trindade family did not attend the sentencing hearing. 
The medical examiner ruled the teen’s death a homicide by blunt force trauma.

Autopsy: Winter Park teen died of blunt force trauma

Cox Media Group

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