Deputies used new DNA technology to identify and then arrest this week the man they say killed a woman during a 2012 robbery at a Chinese restaurant in Pine Hills where she worked.
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The suspect had been on detectives’ radar for nearly 14 years.
Ying Jie Sun, 53, worked at what was then the China Wok restaurant on North Pine Hills Road. Known as “Mommy,” she was well-liked by customers and employees at nearby businesses, the Orlando Sentinel reported at the time of her killing. Community members made a makeshift memorial of flowers and cards outside the restaurant.
On the night of Sept. 26, 2012, a masked gunman walked into the restaurant and demanded cash from employees. Sun spoke little English and had trouble understanding his demands. The frustrated gunmen shot her in the face “execution-style,” detectives said, and then pistol-whipped another employee before running off with the money.
Through witnesses, investigators quickly learned of a possible suspect in the slaying: Calvin Washington, now 34 and serving a 30-year prison sentence after convictions for beating his girlfriend in Ocala and stabbing a neighbor who came to her aid, according to deputies.
At the time of the 2012 killing, police dogs traced the killer’s path from the China Wok to a nearby abandoned home, where a discarded gray-striped polo shirt was found. The shirt matched one seen on the killer in surveillance footage from the China Wok, according to Washington’s arrest warrant affidavit.
A witness told deputies Washington and several others had met earlier that night to discuss robberies, and that Washington had been wearing the same shirt as the robber in the surveillance footage. They also said they saw Washington running into the abandoned home shortly after the robbery, the affidavit said.
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Deputies interviewed Washington in December 2012, but he denied any involvement and said if his DNA was found in the China Wok, then police must have planted it there. He also “believed the detectives were trying to brainwash him,” according to the affidavit.
A 2012 DNA test of the shirt found obtained a mixed DNA profile. A 2022 DNA test of the shirt using new DNA technology determined Washington was “a major contributor to the wearer of the polo shirt,” the affidavit said.
Detectives also were able to link Washington to the killing through DNA evidence recovered from gloves and money collected during the investigation, the sheriff’s office said on Facebook.
Washington has been transferred from prison to the Orange County Jail and now faces new charges of first-degree murder and robbery with a firearm in Sun’s death.
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