After charges in connection with his father’s fatal shooting in Oklahoma were dropped last year, an adolescent who was accused of fatally stabbing his mother in Florida was set free.
At his grandmother’s Auburndale house on Sunday, Polk County, Florida, Sheriff Grady Judd, described what he believed to be the “cold-blooded murder” of the teen’s mother, 39.
Judd clarified, “And it’s not just a singular murder,” adding that the adolescent was accused with his father’s killing in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, on February 14, 2023. According to Judd, the Oklahoma authorities dropped the murder allegation because they were unable to locate any evidence to refute the teen’s claim of self-defense.
The reason for the charge’s dismissal is not stated in court records, and Lincoln County District Attorney Adam Panter did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday via phone or email.
The teenager moved in with his mother in Charlotte County, Florida, in March 2023. The sheriff claimed that he had attacked her several times since then, including a domestic abuse incident in which he “stomped” on her.
The adolescent was once briefly detained for mental health services in accordance with a Florida legislation that permits such detentions. According to Judd, the teenager threatened to kill his mother or himself as he was being released. He was then detained by the authorities for three more days.
The teenager told the operator that he and his mother got into a “very long fight” and that his mother landed on a knife and was bleeding when he called 911 from his grandmother’s Auburndale house on Sunday.
Deputies discovered the woman and a knife inside the house. At that moment, the grandmother wasn’t at home.
“He didn’t say, ‘Mom’s in here, mom’s bleeding to death, mom needs help,'” the sheriff stated. “He looked the deputy in the eye and said, ‘I know my rights. I want an attorney.'”
The teen’s attorney’s name is unknown to the sheriff, he added. The teen has displayed “zero emotion,” according to Judd.
Investigators were informed by neighbors that the mother and boy got into a fight when she got home that afternoon, according to Judd. The mother was allegedly “dragged” into the house by the teenager after she grabbed her by the hair.
According to an autopsy, the medical examiner informed investigators that Judd’s account of her death was “not reasonable nor plausible.”
The teenager faces charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping, and disobeying a no-contact order. He is being housed in a juvenile detention in Polk County.
There are no jail records mentioning him. The state attorney’s office has been asked by the sheriff to charge him as an adult. Judd wondered why Oklahoman authorities dropped the accusations in 2023.
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He stated of the teen’s mother, “Because she took him and tried to do what a mother should do, she’s now dead. Everybody that should be special to him in his life is dead when they crossed him.”
According to an agent’s affidavit from the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, there was “probable cause to believe that” the adolescent committed first-degree murder in the shooting death of his father, despite the teen’s narrative not matching the evidence. According to the affidavit, the teenager requested a counsel when the investigator attempted to question him.
Judd expressed his wish that anyone with knowledge regarding the father’s passing will come forward.
