"Relatives 'amazed' by teen's crime spree," The Miami Herald, 11/5/2007

NEW YORK -- Family and friends gathered Sunday at a funeral home in the Bronx to remember Eric Rosado, the 14-year-old shot and killed while robbing a South Miami-Dade grocery store last week.

Many wondered why the teen, who moved to South Florida in 2005 and returned home to be buried, had suddenly gone astray.

Rosado, a freshman at Cooper City High School, died when a store manager who was being robbed pulled out a gun and shot him.

Police said the teenager's two accomplices in the attempted holdup of the Diaz Grocery Store in Naranja on Tuesday -- and in other mom-and-pop grocery robberies since October -- were his 32-year-old girlfriend, Ivona Sanchez, who is the mother of one of his friends, and Sanchez's sister, Bonie Saldarriaga, 30.

The two women have been charged with second-degree felony murder for the death of their young accomplice, killed in the commission of a crime.

In the Bronx, where Rosado was born and raised and had scores of relatives, shock spread through his funeral.

''We were amazed,'' said Rosado's older sister, Jackie Alvarado, upon hearing the news that her brother had been killed. ``It was not the person that we knew.''

Those who knew Rosado before he moved to Florida described him as a serious student.

''He was always trying to protect people, not hurt them,'' said Jennifer Avallone, his fifth-grade teacher at PS 280. ``All the teachers loved him.''

The small room at the funeral home on 192nd Street filled up with people as afternoon turned to evening. A wreath of pink and white flowers covered the open casket where Rosado's body lay.

The boy's mother sat in the front row during the wake. At one point her sobbing filled the room. ''My God, my God,'' she cried out in Spanish. ``Why?''

Two years ago, Candida Alvarado moved with her son to Florida. Family described Alvarado as a hard-working single mother who stayed involved in her son's life. The move was an attempt to take Rosado away from the tough Bronx streets.

''She wanted to isolate him from the environment here,'' said Rosado's cousin, Juan Cordero, who was one of the last to speak to Rosado before his death.

But the move brought new challenges. Soon, he met Sanchez -- and his life changed.

Rosado's family said his behavior changed. ''My little cousin was stressed. He wasn't the same,'' said Cordero, 22. He said Rosado seemed preoccupied all the time. ``It's like he wasn't there.''

Yet even while Rosado grew increasingly distant from his family, those still close to him said he continued to remember important events.

He made it a point to attend the baby shower for Cordero's first child last May.

He called his sister Jackie when she gave birth to a baby boy in August.

And when another sister, Wanda, got a new job as an administrator of a general pharmaceutical company, he phoned to say congratulations.

''He was just family based,'' said his sister, Wanda, 26.

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