DNA evidence solves 14-year-old Orange County murder, arrest made

Orange County detectives said modern DNA testing finally solved the 2012 murder of Ying Sun, leading to the arrest of 48-year-old Calvin Washington more than 14 years after the killing. Investigators said the case began as an armed robbery at the former China Wok restaurant on North Pine Hills Road in September 2012 and ended with an arrest warrant accusing Washington of first-degree murder and robbery with a firearm.

Deputies said the robbery happened around 8:30 p.m. on Sept. 26, 2012, when a masked gunman entered the restaurant, demanded cash and pistol-whipped another employee. The robbers escaped with less than $100, but the violence left Ying Jie Sun, who was 53 at the time of her death, dead at the scene. Orange County detectives named Washington, then 20, and Raymond Barnes Jr., then 22, as persons of interest in November 2012 and offered a $5,000 reward for information.

The break came when the Orange County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit revisited evidence from the original investigation. Detectives said clothing, gloves and money recovered from the crime scene were reexamined with newer DNA methods, and those biological traces were linked to Washington. FOX 35 Orlando reported that Washington was swabbed for DNA in December 2012, but the first profile came back mixed and did not provide the conclusive result investigators needed at the time.

Washington was already serving a 30-year prison sentence in a separate violent case in Ocala when detectives secured the murder arrest, adding another serious charge to an inmate already under a long sentence. The new warrant turned a dormant file into an active prosecution, built on evidence preserved from the original robbery scene and reworked with technology that was not strong enough to finish the job in 2012.

Fourteen years after the masked gunman left with less than $100, the same evidence that once stalled the case finally spoke clearly enough for investigators to move.