A teenager has been arrested in the death of a 21-year-old Long Island mother whose body was found in the woods last month, police said Saturday. The news of the charges came hours before hundreds of the Sarah Goode's friends and family gathered to remember her in a beachside memorial.
Suffolk County police said Dante Taylor, 19, was charged with second-degree murder early Saturday in the death of Goode, a medical technician with a 4-year-old daughter who was found June 12 less than a mile from her Medford home.
Taylor, of Mastic, was arrested Thursday in Florida by Suffolk County police homicide detectives and United States Marshals. He was then brought back to Long Island. It wasn't immediately clear whether he had a lawyer.
Taylor was initially arrested on an unrelated rape charge from 2011 that was developed during the investigation into Goode's murder, officials said, and then charged with the murder of Goode on Saturday.
Goode's sister Elizabeth DeMuria says the young mother didn't know her accused attacker. Police have not said whether there is any connection between the two.
At the beach memorial Saturday, more than 200 of Goode's loved ones wore t-shirts printed with her face and left flowers in the water.
As the family and friends remembered her, some said Taylor had ruined the life of both Goode and her daughter.
“He not only murdered Sarah, but he also destroyed the hopes, the dreams, the laughter, of a little girl and life with her mother," said Patricia Urizzo, Goode’s aunt.
