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A Schenectady County grand jury indicted a 17-year-old boy for second-degree murder in the death of Samantha Humphrey, District Attorney Robert Carney announced Wednesday, May 14.
The juvenile defendant, who was 14 years old at the time, strangled Humphrey after she revealed that she was pregnant and wanted to keep the baby, Carney said.
Humphrey, a sophomore at Schenectady High School, was last seen alive the day after Thanksgiving 2022, when she snuck out of her Schenectady home to meet her abusive, on-and-off boyfriend at Riverside Park, near the city’s Mohawk River, relatives said.
It was there that she told the boy she thought she was pregnant and that he was the father, Carney said.
“He wanted nothing to do with her baby and insisted that she get rid of the baby,” Carney said. “Samantha told him that she wanted to keep the baby.”
An argument ensued and the two got into a physical fight as they walked across the old Railroad Bridge spanning the Mohawk River, according investigators.
The defendant then choked Humphrey, killing her, before throwing her body into the river below, Carney alleged.
Investigators spent months fruitlessly searching the water and surrounding park with K9 units and dive teams before Humphrey’s body was finally recovered in February 2023, as Daily Voice reported.
An autopsy revealed no evidence of whether the teen was actually pregnant, Carney said. The medical examiner’s report stated that the girl’s cause and manner of death was undetermined, but Schenectady Police said the case was being investigated as a homicide.
Wednesday's arrest followed more than two years of painstaking investigation that included video evidence, phone records, DNA testing, and court-ordered eavesdropping warrants, Carney said. At one point, police had to buy an off-market iPad to salvage parts in order to reassemble Humphrey's broken iPad to collect evidence.
The defendant was arrested by Schenectady Police as he walked to school on Wednesday morning, May 14, Carney said. He pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and was remanded to a juvenile detention facility.
A trial is at least a year out, Carney estimated. If convicted, the boy faces 15 years to life in prison.
Speaking with reporters, Carney called the case an “insult to the community.”
“Even though every life is precious, the death of a 14-year-old child that had her whole life to live in front of her is particularly difficult,” he said.
Humphrey's family alleged that she was the victim of domestic violence from the very beginning.
“She met her abusive ex-boyfriend in a park a half hour walk from her home in the middle of the night. He is a young man with a violent past whom Samantha was forbidden to see,” Humphrey’s aunt, Nica Joy, wrote on a Facebook page she created to help solve the murder. “We are determined to seek justice for Samantha and keep her memory alive.”
To increase awareness about the case, Humphrey’s family had placed billboards and yard signs across Schenectady touting a $20,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.
“We’re not gonna sit at home and wait for Sam’s killer to be arrested or not and just kind of live our lives that way. We’re gonna take what we view as the most effective route and the one that engages the most people,” Samantha’s father Jeff told Inside Edition.
“And a lot of people don’t like seeing a picture of a dead teenage girl who they know was murdered and thrown in a river.”
Beyond a conviction for his daughter’s killer, Mr. Humphrey hopes he can convince New York lawmakers to enact better protections for victims of juvenile domestic violence, he told the outlet.
“If we get any sort of legacy out of this, besides individual justice, I would love to talk to our lawmakers about what we could do to make it easier for mothers and fathers to defend their daughters and sons against predators like this."
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