Shania Thompson

An East St. Louis teen was charged Tuesday with several felonies after prosecutors say he and his 15-year-old girlfriend killed five members of her family and shot and injured two others. Ja’ymeir Davis, 16, faces five counts of murder, along with more than a half-dozen other offenses, including dismembering a body, attempted murder, battery, vehicular hijacking and using a stolen gun. The charging documents filed in St. Clair County accuse Davis of killing Quentin Thompson, 21, Devin May, 24, Shania Thompson, 25, Cherie May, 49, and Patricia May, 74. Davis' girlfriend also faces first-degree murder and other charges in the killing, the Illinois State Attorney's office said Tuesday, but because she is 15 her case is not public. Prosecutors are asking the court to transfer her case from juvenile to adult court, where it would become public. Davis' case was automatically transferred because he is 16. Marcus May, who identified himself as the girl's father, told the Post-Dispatch on Monday that his daughter and Davis plotted to kill her family members before carrying out the weekend shootings. "I lost my whole family in one fell swoop," he said on the front porch of his East St. Louis home. May said Quentin and Shania were his stepchildren, Devin his nephew, Cherie his big sister and Patricia his mother. May, 40, said his daughter, who lived with her mother in East St. Louis, was struggling: She had been getting into trouble at school, then they pulled her out to homeschool her. She was angry about that decision and began periodically running away, he said. At one point, she stole her mother's debit card, he said, among other disputes. Early one morning last week, May said the mother of his daughter called him to say their daughter had run away again and stolen her gun. Their daughter also was in a group chat with her boyfriend and other teens where they talked about killing her family members, the mother told May. May said he didn't take news of the chat very seriously on Tuesday morning last week, and he didn't think the teens would actually do anything. But on Sunday evening, Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly called a news conference announcing the deaths. He called it a "targeted mass shooting," and said the two teens had been arrested. According to the charges filed Tuesday, Cherie May was killed between July 5 and July 7, while the other victims were shot Saturday or Sunday. Davis is also charged with shooting two other families members, Tiffany Thompson and Santosha Scott, who survived. May said his stepdaughter's body was found in a car behind an empty house around the corner from where he lives. Police found his stepson in Jones Park, just on the other side of Interstate 64 from May's home, he said. Tiffany Thompson and Santosha Scott were also shot there. Police said Sunday three bodies were discovered at the Samuel Gompers housing complex, just a few miles down the road from Jones Park. The charges say Davis cut off the right thumb of Patricia May after she died. Authorities did not immediately say why. The shootings were carried out with a 9-millimeter pistol, according to the charging documents. Charges also say the pistol used in the killings was stolen, that Davis hijacked a 2015 Chevrolet Traverse that belonged to Scott, and that Scott was shot in the back.