A 19-year-old from Sanford was sentenced to life in prison for shooting and killing another teenager in an apartment parking lot where kids played in 2023.

PRINCETON POSTELL, 19, was one of two gunmen caught on doorbell video striding with handguns through the Stratford Point Apartments parking lot in Sanford then firing repeatedly from close range at the victim, 16-year-old Jamarcus Parker. Seminole County prosecutors Scott Wood and Richard Babcock tried and convicted POSTELL of first-degree premeditated murder in May and called for the life sentence at a hearing June 18.

In a victim impact statement read to the court, the victim’s mother, Jamecia Parker, said she raced to where Jamarcus lay bleeding from his wounds.

“All I could do was hold his hand, praying for a miracle that never came,” she said. “My source of strength and my guiding light was no longer alive.”

The mother described Jamarcus Parker as a promising student-athlete with a 3.9 GPA who served as a role model and tutor to younger kids.

“As a mom who has lost her child I fear for the safety of other innocent children who might become victims of senseless acts of violence,” Jamecia Parker said.

POSTELL was 17 at the time of the shooting but was charged and tried as an adult. Because of his young age, Circuit Judge Melissa Souto ordered that POSTELL will receive a review of his behavior and potential rehabilitation after serving 25 years in prison.

POSTELL’s co-defendant, Jackie Irving Jr., 20, was convicted at trial in May of first-degree premeditated murder and was sentenced to natural life in prison.

Of the two shooters, prosecutor Wood told the judge, POSTELL led the plan to kill Parker over some insults: “He was the driver behind this.”