Michael Cardona Santamarina, 22, a man from Roanoke, Virginia, was shot on Friday afternoon, January 5, 2018, in the 1300 block of Burks Street SW. When police arrived, he and Troy Savion Gastelo were found inside a vehicle, both wounded by gunfire. Investigators said early on that the shooting did not appear to be random, and detectives began building a timeline by gathering evidence from the scene and interviewing potential witnesses as the two victims were rushed to Carilion Roanoke Memorial
Hospital.
In the first days after the attack, the case moved quickly from urgent medical updates to a manhunt. Detectives charged Monte Taylor of Roanoke with malicious wounding, and he was served with the warrant and jailed. A second warrant for malicious wounding was issued for DeJon Leslie White of Roanoke, and police asked the public to help locate him. As Santamarina’s condition worsened, local reporting described him as dying at the hospital the following Tuesday morning.
White did not stay in Roanoke. In mid-February 2018, authorities announced he had been arrested in Philadelphia by a U.S. Marshals task force after being wanted in connection with the Burks Street double shooting. He faced a fugitive-from-justice charge tied to his extradition back to Roanoke, while Taylor remained in custody as the prosecution took shape around the theory that the two acted together.
Later accounts of the evidence described the shooting as erupting from a drug deal gone wrong: Santamarina had driven to an apartment-building parking lot to sell marijuana, with Gastelo in the front passenger seat. The narrative laid out in court records and subsequent reporting described White arriving and positioning his car near the passenger side, then moving as gunfire broke out. Santamarina was shot in the head, and Gastelo suffered a devastating wound that left a bullet fragment lodged in his spine. Police activity after the shots included a perimeter and K-9 search near nearby apartments, where items were recovered in the woods—including a bag containing firearms—along with forensic links cited in later proceedings.
The case ultimately ended not with a full jury verdict, but with pleas and lengthy prison time. Prosecutors maintained that because the two men acted in a coordinated way, both were legally responsible for the killing. White pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and other charges and received a life sentence with most of it suspended, leaving 25 years to serve. Taylor’s case advanced into trial in February 2019, but he switched to a no-contest plea after several days of testimony; at sentencing in July 2019, the court imposed a sentence totaling life plus 60 years, suspending all but 50 years and ordering probation terms, with additional incarceration time described as stemming from probation revocations in earlier matters.
