

Original Article Found at Palm Beach Post
FORT PIERCE — A Burger King value meal proved the undoing of 17-year-old Alden Benjamin White, who was convicted Friday of killing a 30-year-old Port St. Lucie woman and wounding her fiancé in a brash drive-by shooting last summer.
White, who was 16 and a resident of Cocoa when the shooting occurred near 29th Street and Avenue B in Fort Pierce, shook his head and glanced nervously at his mother, sister and girlfriend as the verdict was read at 4 p.m. His sister sobbed uncontrollably and left the courtroom, while his mother wept silently.
Six jurors deliberated two hours before finding the teen guilty of second-degree murder and attempted murder in the execution-style slaying of Edwina Sheree Jackson and the shooting of Ricardo Thomas, who has recovered.
Prosecutors offered no motive for the crime – speculating outside the courtroom that White may have encountered Thomas at a rap concert in Cocoa – but they argued a time-stamped Burger King receipt and White’s DNA found on a chewed straw in the attackers’ car linked him and an accomplice to the couple’s shooting.
Defense attorney Christopher Beres argued that the straw and DNA could have been left in the car anytime before the shooting, but Assistant State Attorney Daryl Isenhower said ice was still melting in a cup near the straw – part of a Burger King Whopper meal bought in Cocoa 90 minutes before the crime.
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