Friends mourning those killed in Whitfield County Shooting
Some flowers left at a makeshift memorial at the site of a deadly shooting in Dalton on Saturday night.
DALTON, Ga. (WDEF)- We have learned the identities of the four young men killed in Whitfield County Saturday Night.
The Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office says that 21 year old David Delgadillo, 19 year old Joshua Pelico, 18 year old Robert Valencia, and 17 year old David Segura-Cruz were the four young men killed at the park.
Delgadillo and Pelico were from Dalton, and Pelico and Valencia were from Rome, Georgia.
Whitfield County Sheriff Scott Chitwood said two groups of young men met at the park Saturday night.
One group traveled from Rome, roughly an hour drive from Dalton, to meet with Delgadillo and Pelico.
Sheriff Chitwood says they met to exchange what he is calling contraband, as the individuals from Rome showed up with items that are described as being used for concealment purposes to hide items, location, and their identities.
He says both sides showed up with guns based on obtained evidence, leading to an exchange of gunfire between both parties.
Despite these allegations, friends of Valencia and Cruz say this incident does not define them as people.
One friend of the two Rome victims, Sadie Stanfield, said, “I don’t want them to see them as like bad people, like because they were really not bad people. Daniel, he was really quiet, but when he did talk he was really funny, and really sweet. They were not bad people.”
Kylie Worley added of them, “He was very funny, and goofy and stuff, like he wasn’t a bad person.”
A makeshift memorial was being placed where the shooting occurred on Monday at Pleasant Grove Park.
“The only way people think to like solve something is guns and violence, when it shouldn’t be like that at all,” said Worley.
A 16 year old male is facing four felony murder charges in the incident.
In Dalton, Nick Hill, News 12.
The investigation is still ongoing and anyone with more information on what led to the incident is asked to call the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office or the GBI.
