FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A teenager who is accused of stabbing his mother to death in Florida was freed last year after charges were dropped in the fatal shooting of his father in Oklahoma.
Sheriff Grady Judd in Polk County, Florida, described what he classified as the “cold-blooded murder” of the teen’s 39-year-old mother on Sunday at his grandmother’s home in Auburndale.
“And it’s not just a singular murder,” Judd said, explaining that the teen was charged in the Feb. 14, 2023, death of his father in Lincoln County, Oklahoma. The murder charge was dismissed after authorities in Oklahoma could not find evidence that disputed the teen’s claim of self-defense, Judd said.
Court documents do not indicate why the charge was dropped and Lincoln County District Attorney Adam Panter did not immediately return a phone call or email for comment on Thursday. The attorney for the teen in the Oklahoma case also did not immediately return a message left by The Associated Press.
In March 2023, the teen came to Charlotte County, Florida, to live with his mother.
Since then, he had attacked her multiple times, the sheriff said, including a case of domestic violence in which he “stomped” on her.
At one point, the teen was briefly held for mental health services under a Florida law that allows such detentions. As he was being released, the teen threatened to kill either himself or his mother, Judd said. Authorities then held him for three more days.
On Sunday, the teen called 911 from his grandmother’s home in Auburndale, telling the dispatcher that he and his mother got into a “very long fight” and she fell on a knife and was bleeding.
When he met arriving deputies in the front yard, “he was calm, cool and collected, not upset, and he had blood on him,” Judd said.
Inside the home, deputies found the woman and a knife. The grandmother was not home at the time.
“He didn’t say, ‘Mom’s in here, mom’s bleeding to death, mom needs help,’” the sheriff said. “He looked the deputy in the eye and said, ‘I know my rights. I want an attorney.’”
The sheriff said he did not know who the teen’s attorney is.
Judd said the teen has shown “zero emotion.”
Neighbors told investigators the mother and son started arguing after she arrived at the house that afternoon, Judd said. They said the teen grabbed the mother by the hair and “dragged” her into the house.
The medical examiner told investigators that based on an autopsy, “it was not reasonable or plausible that she died the way that he said she did,” Judd said.
The teen is being held in a juvenile facility in Polk County on charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping and violation of a no-contact order. He is not listed in jail records. The sheriff has asked the state attorney’s office to charge him as an adult.
Judd questioned why authorities in Oklahoma dropped the charges in 2023.
“Because she took him and tried to do what a mother should do, she’s now dead,” he said of the teen’s mom. “Everybody that should be special to him in his life is dead when they crossed him.”
An Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agent’s affidavit said the teen’s explanation of what happened did not match the evidence and that there was “probable cause to believe that” the teen committed first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of his father. The affidavit said the investigator tried to question the teen, who invoked his right to an attorney.
Judd said he hopes that if anyone has information about the father’s death, they will come forward.
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Miller reported from Oklahoma City.