Teen Charged With Murder Canadian Student Shot, Killed While On Spring Break In Florida

A teenager was charged with murder Sunday in the fatal shooting of a Canadian student on spring break. Hundreds of other students flocked to a memorial service for the victim.

Donald Shoup, 18, of Ormond Beach, Fla., stopped a police officer in his hometown early Sunday and told him he was wanted in the slaying of 19-year-old Mark Fyke, of Belleview, Ontario, police said.

Shoup was being held without bond in Daytona Beach. He lives in a public housing complex about 10 miles from the crime scene, police said.

Police also interviewed three teenagers who were with Shoup just before the shooting. No other arrests were made.

Fyke was shot once in the head Friday night while talking to his mother on a pay phone outside his beachside motel.

Sunday, about 300 students and local residents gathered under a hot sun for a memorial service sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ, an international college organization that was holding its annual conference here.

“We hope to bring some sense to a senseless act,” said conference coordinator Bob Londres.

Londres, who said he called Fyke’s mother, Christine, to tell her about the service, said she asked him to “thank God for her wonderful son and the years she had with him.”

“She asked that we pray for her family and pray for God to bring an end to this senseless violence.”

Mark, the oldest of three children, was an easygoing, gentle teenager who loved the Toronto Blue Jays and Maple Leafs, Christine Fykes said.

“He was really looking forward to this trip. He paid for it himself with money he earned from McDonald’s,” she told Canadian Press in an interview Saturday.

“He was a great son,” she added, her voice breaking. “I just think God takes only the good ones.”

Daytona Beach Mayor Bud Asher said he was not aware of a student being robbed or killed before in his 42 years in the area.

“We still like to think this is the safest place in America,” he said.

While the memorial service was going on, a bikini contest was under way at a nearby bar and thousands of students still on spring break baked on the white sand of Daytona Beach as planes hauled banners overhead advertising nightspots.