(CNN) — A juvenile has been arrested by Spokane police in connection with the beating death of an 88-year-old World War II veteran this week, police said Friday.
The male suspect has been charged with first-degree robbery and first-degree murder.
The man — Delbert Belton — was beaten and left for dead by two teens outside a lounge in Spokane, Washington, where he loved to go play pool.
The motive? Police don’t have one. The teens appeared to have picked him at random, authorities say.
A retired aluminum company worker who served in the Pacific, Belton, friends say, took a bullet in the leg during the Battle of Okinawa. He survived that attack.
But on Wednesday night, Belton — affectionately called “Shorty” by friends for his height — headed to the Eagles Lodge, where he was a regular.
Police found him in the parking lot, with serious head injuries.
The Spokane County Medical Examiner’s Office on Friday said the cause of the death was blunt facial and head injuries. It also said in a news release that the manner of Belton’s Thursday death was homicide.
“It does appear random,” Spokane police Lt. Mark Griffiths told reporters. “It appears he was assaulted in the parking lot and there was no indication that he would have known these people prior to the assault.”
Officers had been using dogs to search for the suspects, swept for fingerprints on the chain link fence in the area where they were last seen headed, and scoured through surveillance tapes.
It’s the second time in a week that a seemingly random attack by teenagers has claimed a life.
On August 16, a 23-year-old Australian baseball player attending college in Oklahoma was gunned down in the town of Duncan.
One of three teens police arrested in that shooting said they carried it out because “we were bored and didn’t have anything to do.”
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