Teen found not guilty of killing mom in Florida 2 years after he's accused of killing dad

Miami Herald

06-02-2025

A teen shot and killed his father in Oklahoma in 2023, arguing self-defense, then moved to Florida with his mother and was accused of killing her as well, Florida authorities said.
He was never charged in Oklahoma because investigators couldn't rule out self-defense, but he was charged with first-degree murder and kidnapping in Florida, McClatchy News previously reported.
Now, a Polk County jury has found the 17-year-old not guilty.
According to a probable cause affidavit filed in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, the then-15-year-old called 911 on Valentine's Day 2023 to say he had shot his father twice after his dad began chasing him around the house with a knife and cornered him in a bedroom.
He was arrested but not prosecuted, then he moved to Florida with his mother.
History of safety concerns
Prosecutors and defense characterized the mother-son relationship as tumultuous, with law enforcement being called for domestic violence in November 2023, leading to the son's arrest, according to the Polk County Sheriff's Office.
The mom had reached out to a crisis line saying 'she didn't feel safe with her son,' and the teen was Baker Acted under a Florida law that allows the state to institutionalize someone at risk of harming themselves or others, a Charlotte County deputy testified during a hearing.
But when he was released, he refused to leave the facility, saying he didn't feel safe around his family either, the deputy said.
'He didn't want to go home with his mother or his grandmother, that he didn't feel safe in how he would handle that situation,' the deputy said during the hearing.
The teen was then accused of threatening to harm his mom and grandmother and was Baker Acted again.
The teen's defense attorney, Amy Thornhill, said in an opening statement during the trial broadcast by Court TV that the mom repeatedly threatened to harm herself and others, including in front of her son.
'You'll hear this from her own mother,' Thornhill said. 'That she makes things up. That she is unpredictable, she is erratic and goes into rages.'
Self-defense argument
On Sept. 6, 2024, he left home after a fight with his mom and went to stay at his grandmother's house while she was away, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said in a news conference at the time of the teen's arrest.
His mother told him to come back home but he refused, so she drove to get him Sept. 8, according to Judd.
A witness reported seeing the two arguing outside, then the teen grabbed his mom by her hair and dragged her inside the home, deputies said in a news release.
Later that night, the 17-year-old called 911 to say his mother had 'lunged at him with a knife' and had fallen on it, piercing her neck, according to deputies.
While a medical examiner determined she couldn't have died accidentally, refuting his initial claim that his mother had fallen on a knife, the teen's attorneys argued he had acted in self-defense.
'Isn't it more reasonable given everything you know that (the mom) picked up the knife, threatened (her son) with it and he defended himself, as he's been saying he would do for a year?' Thornhill said during closing statements.
She argued it's possible his mother wanted to die and forced her son to kill her.
Thornhill said the state offered no proof about what happened in the house, least of all proof beyond a reasonable doubt to convict the teen.
Prosecutor Mark Levine said the mom 'meant no harm' to her son that day, adding she 'was willing to die ... at the hands of her son just to spend some more time with him.'
After a day of deliberation, a jury acquitted the teen of both charges, records show.
Polk County is about a 60-mile drive east from Tampa.