Rachael DelTondo was shot multiple times in her mother’s driveway in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, on Mother’s Day 2018.
Now, more than five years later, the local district attorney has finally announced a prime suspect and says it was motivated out of a crime of passion. However, the case still lacks evidence to prosecute the suspect at this time.
“Sheldon Jeter is the prime suspect though we don’t have enough evidence to make an arrest,” Beaver County District Attorney David Lozier stated on August 15. “We are seeking help from the public and will be opening up new avenues such as offering a reward for new information.”
Jeter was the 33-year-old teacher’s younger lover and former student. The fall before her death, DelTondo was suspended from her job at Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School on an allegation that she had been inappropriately involved with a male student at her school.
Police had even backed up this allegation with evidence placing DelTondo and the teenage boy in a parked car at 2:00 a.m. However, DelTondo was never criminally charged.
In 2021, Jeter was convicted of the 2021 murder of Tyric Pugh, 30, a close friend with whom he had gone out for ice cream before the 2020 fatal shooting. Jeter was sentenced to life behind bars, but a hearing on alleged juror misconduct is pending.
Jeter, a high school football star now in his mid-20s, has never been charged in connection with DelTondo’s death.
On the night of her shooting, the teacher had also just returned from a trip for ice cream. Getting out of her car at her mother’s house, someone gunned her down, firing between 10 to 12 shots in her direction, neighbors reported at the time. DelTondo was pronounced dead at the scene around 10:30 Mother’s Day night.
“I think people will speculate that there were sour feelings,” Lozier said of Jeter’s possible motive to murder. “Maybe jealousy.”
Following her alleged tryst with Jeter, DelTondo had become engaged to Frank Catroppa, who police also questioned in the course of their murder investigation.
Lozier has defended DelTondo against allegations of improper conduct with Jeter when he was underage by saying, “The accusations were shameful and the product of a personal vendetta against DelTondo at the time.”
It has been hard for investigators to prosecute because there were no eyewitnesses to DelTondo’s shooting and law enforcement has never recovered the gun used in the shooting.
However, Lozier claims, “GPS and surveillance footage has built a strong circumstantial case that Jeter had a pattern of stalking his former teacher around the time of her murder. We plan to unseal warrants due to this evidence.”
The district attorney appealed to the public for help in the case, saying his office needs lynchpin evidence that would place Jeter at the crime scene and is willing to offer an award for such information.
“I can’t put him in the driveway beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said. “Somebody out there knows something. Somebody knows something to affirm what happened.”
Jeter’s defense lawyer, Michael Santicola, who represented him in the Pugh murder case, said, “The district attorney’s announcement, naming Jeter as the prime suspect with only circumstantial evidence reeks of desperation.”
“That certainly seems like much to do about nothing,” he continued. “It seems like a strange announcement at this point in time five years later. Are we basically announcing that we don’t have any evidence to charge anyone? I can prove without a doubt that my client is 100% innocent in the DelTondo murder.”
DelTondo’s parents believe Jeter is guilty of killing their daughter, but also said that a lot of information connected to the case had not been released to the public.
