Rachael DelTondo.Photo:Rachael DelTondo/Facebook
Rachael DelTondo/Facebook
“Sheldon Jeter is the prime suspect though we don’t have enough evidence to make an arrest,” Beaver County District Attorney David Loziertold news outletsAug. 15. “We are seeking help from the public and will be opening up new avenues such as offering a reward for new information.”
Jeter was the 33-year-old teacher’s younger lover and former student. The fall before her death, DelTondo was suspended from her job at Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School on an allegation that she had been inappropriately involved with a male student at her school and police officers alleged they had seen her with a teenage boy in a parked car at 2:00 a.m., theBeaver County Timesreported. DelTondo was never criminally charged.
In 2021, Jeter wasconvicted of the 2021 murderofTyric Pugh, 30, a close friend with whom he had gone out for ice cream before the 2020 fatal shooting. Jeter was sentenced to life behind bars, but a hearing on alleged juror misconduct is pending,48 Hoursreports.
Jeter, a high school football star now in his mid-20s, has never been charged in connection with DelTondo’s death.
On the night of her shooting, the teacher had also just returned from a trip for ice cream. Getting out of her car at her mother’s house, someone gunned her down, firing between 10 to 12 shots in her direction, neighbors reported at the time. DelTondo was pronounced dead at the scene around 10:30 Mother’s Day night.
Lozier has defended DelTondo against allegations of improper conduct with Jeter when he was underage,telling CBS Newsthat the accusations were “shameful" and the product of “a personal vendetta against her at the time.”
Sheldon Jeter Jr.Andrew Rush/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP
Andrew Rush/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP
Jeter’s defense lawyer, Michael Santicola, who represented him in the Pugh murder case, told the station that the district attorney’s announcement, naming Jeter as the prime suspect with only circumstantial evidence reeks of “desperation.”
“That certainly seems like much to do about nothing,” he told the station. “It seems like a strange announcement at this point in time five years later. Are we basically announcing that we don’t have any evidence to charge anyone?”
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DelTondo’s parents told the channel that they believe Jeter is guilty of killing their daughter but also said that a lot of information connected to the case had not been released to the public.
Lozier is months away from an election for district attorney, and his opposing candidate Nathan Bible characterized the naming of Jeter as a suspect as Lozier’s “trying to throw something up there and hoping it sticks.”
“This is certainly a black mark on his record as a DA,” Bible said of the five-year-old murder case that has never led to any criminal charges.
source: people.com
